


Look At What the Light Did Now

by Plenoptic



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Aligned verse alternative, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mixed verse, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:49:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenoptic/pseuds/Plenoptic
Summary: Ariel gets a new job, falls for her coworker, aids a revolution, dies and gets reincarnated--typical meet-cute stuff.





	1. It's been kind of a night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lifotni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lifotni/gifts).



* * *

 

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

Ariel’s going to die. She knows that. Knows that. She’s not trying to outmaneuver death—not for much longer. If this is her time, so be it. She just wants it on her terms. She just wants to be home.

When the critical messages assaulting her systems begin to obscure her vision, she mutes them. She doesn’t need to know specifically which line is leaking where and how much. A tell-tale splatter of bright blue energon follows her along the decimated streets of downtown Iacon. She staggers past Maccadam’s, pausing for a moment to brace herself on its dilapidated doors and cycle air into her screaming body.

Maybe she’s close enough. There was a kiss on this doorstep, a small, soft thing. No preamble—he’d just caught her elbow and tugged her close, bent his head to kiss her. They skipped the drinks that night—they couldn’t get home fast enough.

Just a little farther.

She pushes off Maccadam’s doors and stumbles onward, one arm wrapped tightly around her chestplates. She’s afraid of what’s going to happen when her grip finally loosens, what parts will spill out, what bits of her body she’ll suddenly be intimately acquainted with. Her spark flares up every few breems, and the pain is so stunning and intense that she has to stop moving entirely until it abates once more.

A Seeker trine screams overhead, flying dangerously low and close. A few plasma rounds sprinkle the ground at her feet, a lucky shot lancing through her calf. She doesn’t register how much it hurts, nor does she panic—the Seekers race onward, nonplussed. She’s seen them taking potshots at unlucky stragglers enough times to know that she’s just passing entertainment. Hopefully her leg will hold her weight just a bit longer.

Three blocks. Two. One. She staggers a little up the steps to the apartment complex, which sags on its support struts. Flames lick somewhere nearby—she can hear their crackle and feel the distant heat, but they’re out of her optic range. She braces herself at the foot of the stairs against a wave of agony in her desperate, dying spark.

“Hold on,” she gasps out, clenching her chestplates. “Please. Please.”

The pain eases. She turns her gaze up the staircase, venting a hard exhale. Living on the seventh floor was bad enough when she wasn’t leaking energon from every conceivable major line. But there’s no way the lift is operational. The city’s power went out joors ago and the backup energy reserves have long since run dry.

Stairs it is.

Hauling her broken body up seven flights takes as much time as the long walk from the strike zone to the complex. She doesn’t have time to ruminate on the carnage she’s left behind, every iota of her concentration and willpower focused on dragging her bleeding frame up one stair, then another, another. One more. One more. She’s already made it so far. Maybe this is far enough—the pain is—is—

He always looked so eager when she knocked, when he swept the door open, that grin on his faceplates, the shy ducking of his head. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she’d murmur, step into him, smile when his cautious hands framed her face and tilted her mouth up into his.

She had to see the door, at least.

She collapses on flight six, her shot leg non-functional. She queries her critical alert system and groans. That was a mistake. The impending reality of her own mortality sucks bad enough without her systems reminding her every three astroseconds. She takes her combat system offline entirely, and is shocked by the sudden quiet. Even the gunfire and missile barrage is too distant to make out. The city is quiet and still in war as it never was in peace. Ariel sits for a breem, too weary to move, to even think of moving.

Orion is dead. She knows that. Knows that. She has known that for three cycles, sixteen orns, and a handful of joors that hurt too fiercely to dwell on. And the issue is that, despite _knowing_ he’s dead, there is some infinitesimal chance that if she knocks on the door, he’ll answer. Somehow. There is a substantially larger chance that he won’t, but for as long as she doesn’t knock on the door, both possibilities exist, at least. So she can head into their apartment and die in their berth and maybe touch the memory of him, or she can die on this stairway tricking her sputtering CPU into taking the quantum leap of faith that her Orion is somehow standing at the door, waiting for her.

Ariel sits until her chronometer gives out. Which isn’t long. With strength that comes from only Primus knows where, she gets to her feet, wavers, and step by step climbs up to the seventh floor.

Their door is the third on the right. 707. She stands before it, places a hand on its smooth surface, somehow untouched. The apartments on either side have been looted, their doors ripped from the hinges, mag locks shot to pieces. Bits and bobbles litter the hallway. She recognizes a stuffed mechanocat on the ground as having belonged to the youngling who lived in 709. Her parents, two mechs and a flier, were the first Ariel knew to leave Cybertron at the first murmur of trouble, heading for the colony satellites one system over. One of the mechs was a longtime colonist who had barely escaped a tyrannical colony lord with his life vorns ago. He had a good optic for trouble. He’d told Ariel gravely, the morning he left, that she and Orion should escape while they had the chance.

Far too late, of course, to wish that she’d listened. And pointless. Ariel places her hand on the small pad to the left of the door. The locks are magnetic, not electric—it should respond to her EM field, provided that no one moved into the apartment after she abandoned it, provided no one has been in to tamper with the locks—

The door slides open. Orion isn’t there.

Which she knew. But now that she _knows_ , a sob climbs up out of her, and she presses a hand to her mouthplates as she stumbles into their apartment. It’s pristine. Untouched. The windows are shut tight; the fine layer of dust and gunpowder and debris that blankets the rest of Iacon hasn’t snuck in. She trails her fingers along a brightly colored wall, wracking sobs shaking her vents, bypasses a photocube on the sitting room table that contains a picture of him. She nearly falls twice in her haste to get to the small room that holds their berth, which they bought on sale and was slightly too short for Orion’s gangly frame.

She stands a long time in the entry to their berthroom, crying loudly, freely. What’s the worst that could happen—a wandering looter hears her and kills her? Let them. She steps forward, touches the indentation in the berth where Orion’s body used to rest—when he wasn’t rolling onto her side, snuggling against her back, waves of heat from his frame making recharge near impossible. She climbs into his side of the berth and shudders at the phantom heat her sensors pretend is still detectable. Energon pools wetly between her broken frame and the slightly giving berth service.

Ariel tilts her head, reaches for the few possessions sitting on his bedside table. A datapad he was reading. A holodisk from Jazz, presumably filthy. She touches a photocube and smiles at the image that renders on its surface—slightly out of focus and poorly framed, Orion holding her in one arm and trying to manipulate the cube with his other hand, his expression furrowed in concentration while she laughs. The Crystal Gardens twinkle behind them, their details inscrutable. It was a cheap cube. The photos from that trip are terrible. Ariel picks up the cube and places it on the berth beside her.

_“Just ask someone to take it for us.”_

_“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.”_

She can hear his voice. She must be really far gone if she can actually _hear_ him. Her optics track around the room, chasing his phantom.

_“I’m sorry. I’m a coward.”_

_“Think anyone will notice if we omit this part?”_

_“I’m heading in a little early. See you tonight?”_

_“Maybe we can afford it this cycle.”_

_“Hey. Open your legs for me.”_

_“It’s about Megatronus. I—I think I believe him.”_

_“Ariel.”_

Her pump stops, out of energon to move. She knows that much. Which means she has a breem. Maybe. Her spark has quieted, at least.

_“Well, maybe you should bond with me.”_

_“Maybe I should.”_

“I should have,” she murmurs into the dark. The photocube flickers and goes out. She tugs it into her chestplates and sighs. The planet’s gravity is growing stronger, drawing her down, pulling her toward its core. Orion’s dead, and in the berth with her, and waiting at the door. All of him. All at once. “I’m home,” she says, smiling a little, tilting her head up for the kiss she knows is coming. “Hi, Orion.”

 

* * *

 

**_Before_ **

* * *

 

“Hi. Orion Pax?”

He looks up from his monitor for the first time in six or seven joors, blinking the weariness from his optics, and finds himself staring at the prettiest bot he’s ever seen in his entire life. For several long astroseconds, he can only stare, feeling increasingly stupid by the moment and unable to intervene on his own behalf. The femme glances around, as if looking for help, and then looks back at him.

“You’re Orion Pax, right?”

“Hi,” he says, and seriously contemplates the chances that the planet will just open up and swallow him. If Primus is real, now would be the time to show Itself.

“Hi,” she repeats, frowning a little. “Sorry, am I in the right place?—I was told to find someone called Orion Pax, but—”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean.” He stops, gathers himself. “I am Orion Pax. Sorry.”

She blinks at him. “For what?”

When did Cybertronian culture stop endorsing ritual suicide as a means of regaining one’s respectability? That was a good practice. Someone should bring that back. He should bring it back. Right now. “For. Um. Sorry. It’s been—my shift started eight joors ago, and I—”

He stops talking, trying to remember where she can go to ask for an immediate reassignment, and his spark falls straight out of its casing and through the floor when she giggles and shrugs.

“I mean, I get it. Archival work. My CPU is fried about two breems in.” She extends a hand—a ridiculously small and delicate and lovely hand—and smiles. “I’m Ariel. You had requested a current events scribe to help you record the uprisings in Tarn?”

“Yes. Yes! I did.” He takes her hand, feeling too ludicrously large and clumsy to even be coexisting on the same planet as her. “I’m Orion Pax.”

Her smile becomes a grin. “Yeah, we covered that. You, uh, don’t get out much, do you, Orion Pax.”

“Just Orion is fine.” He looks down at his monitor because he can’t bear to keep making optic contact with her. “I can call you Ariel?”

“That would be, uh, my whole entire designation.”

“Right.” His GPS pings him to let him know that it’s mapped the quickest possible route to the smelting pools. Ouch. Jazz would call that a ‘self-burn.’ “Um, thank you for coming. I’ve been archiving a lot of this myself, but there’s so much, and, um—things keep happening, so keeping up has been—”

“Yeah. More reports every orn, it seems.” She steps up onto the slightly raised platform that houses his work station, standing so close that he can feel her EM field. By the way she flinches a little, she can probably feel his too. He forces himself to take a deep intake and reigns in his field a little. “Can you show me what you have so far?”

“How much time do you have?”

She grins up at him. “Barring anything more interesting coming along, I’m willing to make this my full-time project for the time being. Show me what you got, Orion.”

Circumstances being what they are, he feels he has two options—take his spark out of his chest and offer it to her, or show her his work on Tarn. Clearing his vocalizers a little, he places his hands on the monitor’s interface. “So, there’s this gladiator from Kaon, designation unknown. All I have right now is a serial number…”

/ page break

“I mean, he’s cute, right? You said he was cute.”

“Sure, he’s cute. But it’s like he’s never talked to _anyone_ before.” Ariel nurses her highgrade, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t know. He’s nice, I guess. And it’s a good assignment.”

“You should stick with it,” Redlight says, waving over the bartender. “Hall of Records? Come on. Instant promotion!”

“I don’t want another round.”

“Sure you do.” Redlight hands her a cube and clinks them together. “Here’s to your new life as a top-tier archival scribe. When’s Fly-By gonna, you know, fly by?”

“Whenever Fly-By fragging well pleases.” Ariel sips the new drink and makes a face. “That’s so _strong_ , Red!”

“Well, we’re celebrating!”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t afford this.”

“It’s my treat.”

“Not gonna argue with a good thing,” Ariel says.

She should have, of course. She’s on cube number three and feeling substantially better about her new job and her new workmate and really everything in the universe when Redlight, well past compromised, leans into her audio and says, “ _Ooh_ , I’d like to climb that one like a—”

Whatever horrifying simile Redlight had in mind gets drowned out by the thudding of the bassline. It’s not Ariel’s type of club for this is exact reason—too loud, too crowded, and Redlight’s inhibitions are as fleeting as a solar wind. Her friend is indicating with a pointed finger whatever bot she’d like to scale, and Ariel follows her finger with difficulty through the roving bodies—

“Oh, _frag_ ,” she hisses, and ducks down out of her seat. “Frag!”

“What?” Redlight unsteadily crouches beside her. “What, what?”

“That’s him! That’s the mech I just started with! Scraplet bits!”

“Oh!” Redlight gets to her feet, squints over the crowd, and then grins down at her. “Oh, he is _real_ cute. You’re mad about working with _that_? Get over yourself.”

“I didn’t say I was mad, and quit looking at him! What if he comes over here?”

“So what if he does?”

Ariel doesn’t actually know “so what,” but she _does_ know that under no circumstances does she want to interact with Orion Pax after three cubes of highgrade while her best friend is plotting her sexual conquest. A couple nearly trips over them on their way to the bar and shoots filthy glances down at them. Ariel ignores them.

“Look, can we just go? I just got this job and we both know I’m not qualified and I don’t want to blow it by—”

“Hey, Ariel!”

She groans and puts her face in her hands. It figures that Fly-By, whom she likes very much but is also the single loudest bot in all of physical existence, would choose exactly that moment to make his entrance. Her partner swoops down, wings an agitated mess, and hauls her up into his arms, nuzzling the side of her face.

“Hey, darling. Miss me?”

“Put me down,” she hisses, beating a fist on his chest and squirming down out of his embrace. “Move, move, can we go over there, please?”

Fly-By frowns, looking between his frantic partner and Redlight. “What’s got her tailpipe in a twist?”

Redlight laughs. “The mech she just got assigned to at the Hall of Records is here. And he’s, uh, _gorgeous_ , by the way.”

“Uh oh.” Fly-By puts on an expression of mock solemnity, putting an arm around Ariel’s shoulders. “Do I have some competition?”

“Not if I get to him first.” Redlight is leering at Orion Pax again, tapping her fingertip on her chin. “What’s he into? Think he’s with anyone?”

“You know, it didn’t come up somehow,” Ariel grunts, wriggling free of Fly-By and swatting his hand away from her aft when he gives chase. “Took you long enough to show up, by the way. We got here over a joor ago.”

“Got preoccupied.” Fly-By leans against the bar, offering her that dazzling grin that somehow always makes her forgive him. “So how’s the new job? Phenomenal hunk of a boss aside.”

“One, he’s not my boss. Two, he’s not a _hunk_ , and also _ew_. And it’s not bad. This stuff in Tarn is wild.”

“Uh huh,” Fly-By says, but his attention is on trying to wave down the bartender.

“Maybe it’s because the mining castes just don’t _live_ here in Iacon, but it’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around—”

“Hey, can I get a _drink_?”

Ariel trails off, looking down at her hands on the bar. Redlight leans over Fly-By’s shoulder, the both of them laughing, the music drowning them out. A mech knocks into Ariel’s back with a gruff apology. She slips out of her seat when Fly-By’s head is turned and struggles her way through the tightly woven bodies the jockey, Blaster, has completely and utterly under his spell. A small door in the back of the bar reads STAFF ONLY, and she slips through it. STAFF at Maccadam’s amounts to the grizzled barkeep himself and the one minibot who zips around the bar delivering drinks. Their hideaway is unoccupied—it’s little more than a gap between the bar and the adjacent building, inaccessible from the street, but at night the sky overhead is a brilliant strip of stars. Ariel leans against the wall, closing the door behind her, and breathes a low sigh when the quiet settles over her.

Someone clears their vocalizers, and she nearly jumps out of her plating, whirling around to see Orion Pax himself hovering on the other side of the door. He winces and half-lifts his hand, seems to think better of it, and drops it back to his side.

“Hi. Sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, you’re—uh—sorry, hi. I’ll just—” Ariel gestures vaguely toward the door. “I didn’t mean to disturb—”

“Oh, no, it’s—”

“Well, you were here first, so—”

“But I—I’ll—”

They both reach for the door handle at the same time, and she stills when his hand covers hers. It takes her a moment to realize what’s different in this touch compared to their handshake earlier—it’s his field. That frenetic anxiety has dissipated—he feels calm, serene. Warm and placid. She looks up at him, finds him gazing back. Like they’ve been shocked, they both jerk their hands back, apologizing simultaneously.

“Sorry,” Ariel stammers, shuffling back a few steps. “I just—yeah. It’s been kind of a night. I’m sorry this is weird, it’s—”

He holds his hands up and shakes his head, offering her a nervous smile. “It’s fine. It’s fine, really. It _has_ been a night, hasn’t it.”

Ariel shrugs one shoulder, wringing her hands behind her back. “You, uh, you also get dragged here against your will?”

“Rather. My friend Jazz, he…well. I lack his social skills.” He lifts an optic ridge at her. “I don’t get out much, as you said.”

“Oh, Primus.” She places a hand on her helm, wincing. “Sorry. That was really rude. I was nervous, I—you know, starting at the Hall of Records and everything, and—”

“No, it was astute,” he says, and laughs. He has a nice laugh—she doesn’t know why that surprises her, but it does. There’s a warmth to his laughter, a sincerity. “You’re right. I have a bad habit of locking myself in the archives. Maybe now that you’re on the project, I’ll just have to leave work on occasion.” He winces and backtracks quickly. “Assuming you want to stay on, of course. I wouldn’t blame you if—what’s happening in Tarn is—I mean, watching all the footage can be—”

“Yeah,” she says, leaning up to pat his shoulder. He stares down at the point where her hand meets his broad shoulder as if he’s never seen two bots touch before. “I get it. Going through it all by yourself must have been difficult. I’d like to stay on the project. It feels important.”

He looks back down at her and tilts his head to the side. She waits for a response, but it doesn’t come. He merely looks at her, mouthplates frowning a little, optic ridges furrowed. Not angry, no, but—perplexed.

“Have you refueled?” he asks suddenly, a breath before she finds a way to break the sudden silence. “Besides three cubes of bad highgrade.”

“No, I—” She stops and squints at him. “How’d you know I had three?”

The look of horror that crosses his face is priceless, and she has to choke down a giggle when he sputters out, “Oh, I—saw you come in—and, um—I didn’t think you’d want me to say hello, but I—I wasn’t _watching_ you or anything, but I—well, that makes it sound like I _was_ , but I _wasn’t_ , I just happened to—”

“Hey, Orion. Orion?” She laughs and places a hand on his arm, shaking her head. “It’s okay. Okay?  To answer your question, no, I haven’t refueled, and my friends are really annoying me tonight.”

He doesn’t relax, per se, but something in his field softens, and his shy, cautious grin returns. “Mine, too. You want to—um, leave? We can—talk more about the project. Or something.”

“Or something?” she laughs.

She won’t do him the indecency of flipping to thermal vision, but she’s sure his faceplates must be growing hot. “Or just talk about the project,” he says quickly, holding his hands up in surrender. “Look, have mercy on me, alright? I’m doing my best here.”

“You’re doing great,” she laughs, and opens the door for him. “Let’s blow this joint.”

 

* * *

 

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

He’s dying. Megatronus—no, Megatron—has killed him. It’ll be a matter of moments now. Gasping, clutching at the gaping hole where his chest used to be, he drags himself along the stone floor of the cavern—toward what, he doesn’t know. He only knows that he doesn’t want to lie here and wait for death. The cavern is dimly lit with a blue light that seems to have no source. All of his diagnostic systems are offline. There’s absolutely no feedback between his processors and his body, just his motor cortex pushing him forward into the looming nothing. Maybe this is Death itself, this slow crawling in the dark. He’s so cold.

The dark and the silence are complete, total. He knows he is in pain, but it’s so distant, out of focus. Pain is a thing happening somewhere else, in a body that is no longer his. Perhaps was never his. He’s nothing, now. He’s failed—to stand up to Megatronus, to make him see the righteous path, to stop him before all of this—

“Ariel,” he hears himself saying, far away. “Ariel. Ariel…”

He can’t remember her. Why can’t he remember her? He wants to see her so badly. Who is she? Who is _he_? In the gathering dark, he is just…

His helm drops to the cold floor. He watches himself bleed out, watches the hemorrhaging streams of energon from the cavern of his chest slow to a trickle. This is it, finally. Truly. It’s not so bad, dying. Cold. But it doesn’t hurt much. He just wishes he could make sense of the whispering in his head. All the voices. There are so many voices.

_“Optimus.”_

That’s her voice. Ariel’s voice. Whoever she is. He tries to murmur back to her. So, so tired.

_“Optimus. Just a little further. Please.”_

The voices are kind and urging, and hers is so pretty. Soothing, like a caress.

_“Come home—please, Orion, come home.”_

Orion?

Orion Pax.

Drawing in a great, shuddering breath, he lifts his helm. The light has a source—has had a source all along. A faint, iridescent orb, floating in the dark. He drags himself forward, coughs, heaves up a congealed clot of energon onto the floor. The voices are growing louder, hers especially.

_“Just a little more, sweetspark.”_

“I can’t,” he gasps. He _can_ feel the pain now. Warmth radiates from the light in the cavern’s heart, but with the warmth comes sensation, and his body is _broken_.

_“Shh. Shh, love. I’m here. I’m here now.”_

Closer. Just a little closer. A little more. If he can get to the light—if he can get to the light, then—? Then…

He’s nearly there. Her voice urging him on, he reaches out, up—it’s just overhead, if he could stand, he could—extending the gaping wound in his chest fills him with agony the likes of which he’s never experienced, and he collapses back against the ground, intakes wheezing, a single feeble warning flashing in his vision, alerting him that shutdown is imminent—

Someone touches him. Somehow. He knows he’s alone, save for the voices that must be in his head, just the psychotic rumblings of his dying mind. With the last of his energy he unshutters his optics, tilts his head up. She’s there, cradling the light in her hands, and she leans down into him, murmuring in his audio, and her hands slip into the emptiness of his chest and settle the light into his shattered sparkcase.

And then it’s not just warmth but heat—fire—a nova. All the heat that fails to escape a collapsing star. The voices crescendo in his head—some crying, some wailing, shouting, some encouraging—his body falls apart, atomized. He is falling through empty space, reaching for her, the planet’s innermost sanctum rushing up to meet him, catch him, and he sees it, the being slumbering at its core—

He hears her calling out to him, and then a sea of blue light opens beneath him, and he slips under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my sweetspark--
> 
> The last few weeks--maybe months now?--have been some of the most exciting and scary of my entire life. I have never, ever fallen for someone so quick and so hard and so completely. You make me excited for the future in a way I haven't been in ages, you've made me want to start writing again, you're kind-hearted and funny and I love your puns even when I hate them. It's weird to be asking this before I've even called you up, but you know I write much better than I speak. I don't know what our futures hold but I know I want you in mine, whether that's next month or a year from now. Thank you for being the braver one between us and for taking a chance on me. Please be my girlfriend.


	2. Call me Unicron and smite me here

****

* * *

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

Wingsaber stares at an emergency alert that makes exactly no sense. He looks around for help, remembers too late that he is, of course, the only one on guard, and has been for some time. He turns back to the panel that has just materialized on the tower’s wall, frowning. _Intruder_.

“That’s impossible,” he says to nothing and to no one. Kaon is on lock-down—no one in, no one out. All civilians are to stay in their homes. Only the Elite Guard prowl the streets. Wingsaber is the only non-militia bot out right now.

 _Intruder_ , the glyph insists. Wingsaber chews on his lower lip components. Best case scenario, this is a small, meaningless glitch. Which wouldn’t actually be very good, because Vector Sigma isn’t meant to _glitch_. Worst case scenario, there really is someone in there. Which would mean they either tunneled in—bad—or Wingsaber somehow fell asleep without realizing it and they somehow had an access key and walked right in through the front door. Worse. But he’s almost _positive_ he’s been conscious for a while—for his whole shift, right? Wouldn’t he notice if he took an unscheduled recharge cycle? No, no one got through the door. The door hasn’t opened in vorns. No one has sought out Vector Sigma and Vector Sigma has called for no one.

 _Intruder_. It’s not going away. Oh, Primus, it’s not going away. Wingsaber hops from one foot to the other, clutching his glaive, groaning to himself. He’s gotta do something. Call it in? What if this _is_ his fault? The top brass will melt him down for scrap. Alpha Trion will see to it personally.

He could also go in. Uninvited. He could go into Vector Sigma’s chambers uninvited. “Oh Primus,” he mutters, and then, “I _get_ it already,” when the glyph flashes again. “Oh, frag me.”

He presses his hand to the door. A large grid of runes shimmers into existence where his fingers rest on the ancient metal. He draws a pattern through them, muttering the mantra his creators taught him to help him remember his access key. After a long pause—too long—the doors rumble and part. He expects a blast of musty air, but the chamber within is still and quiet. Maybe someone really _did_ enter somehow. Looking over his shoulder one last time, Wingsaber gulps and heads in. The doors swing closed behind him.

The tower is utterly dark. He taps his glaive against the floor and breathes a low sigh of relief when the small crystal embedded in the other end illuminates. With the weapon held before him, Wingsaber creeps into the chambers of Vector Sigma, his pump thundering. Maybe he should have called for backup. Nah—nothing in his most fervent nightmares could do worse to him than what Alpha Trion would do if this is somehow his fault.

He tiptoes down the long hallway, steeling himself for a moment before entering the dome-shaped room that houses Vector Sigma’s mainframe. He’s stunned to find the mainframe activated, at least partially—its innermost rings glow faintly, casting blue light over a figure lying crumpled in the middle of the floor.

Wingsaber freezes, grip on his glaive tightening. He takes a step forward. When the figure doesn’t move, he takes a few more. Vector Sigma doesn’t respond, either. Easy goes. He steps gingerly over the outermost rings of the mainframe, apologizing silently to Primus and to the computer and also to his creators, struggling to keep his intakes under control as he approaches the figure on the ground.

It’s a bot, Cybertronian, and a normal one, from the looks of it—but a big one. Trembling, Wingsaber extends his glaive, stops and considers, and then, swearing to himself, pokes the bot with his weapon’s tip. No response. Wingsaber inches forward, and yelps, his voice echoing through the chamber, when his foot lands in something wet. He backpedals wildly, tripping over his feet, and slams to the ground with a grunt, his glaive sent clattering across the floor.

That does it—the mainframe hums, and the rings that encircle the floor illuminate, casting the room in a rich blue glow that renders the figure starkly visible. It’s a mech, one of the biggest Wingsaber has ever seen—maybe _the_ biggest, excepting Ultra Magnus. The mech lies on his back, optics dark—his frame is a wreck, a mangled mess of twisted plating and smeared energon. There’s a wide hole in the middle of his chest as big as Wingsaber’s head, seeping energon onto the floor, collecting in a puddle now partially smeared by Wingsaber’s foot. Wingsaber crawls forward, venting quickly, and peers into the mech’s chest. The grotesque cavity is full of the shards of his shattered sparkcasing, but his spark is still lit—and it’s encased in the most peculiar structure Wingsaber has ever seen, a brilliant crystalline matrix so delicate he’s afraid just looking too long will cause it to dissipate.

“Hey,” Wingsaber says, in a voice that comes out too high for his liking, “are you, uh—well you’re pretty obviously not okay. Are you alive?”

Much to his shock, the mech groans lowly, his helm rocking a little; his optics flicker and darken again. A gray mask shields his face below the optics. When he speaks, it’s scarcely above a whisper.

“Ariel…”

Wingsaber doesn’t have a clue what that means, but he is positive that, firstly, this isn’t his fault, and secondly, he’s in over his head. He pings his comm link and waits breathlessly before someone answers.

“Uuuhhhhltra Magnus? Sir? This is Wingsaber, of the Vector Sigma—yeah, that’s me, uh, listen, we got a—I got a situ—sorry, yessir—that is, I just found someone inside the mainframe.—Uh, yes sir, that’s correct.—No, sir—no, sir, it’s a mech, and—well, he’s pretty bad off, he—uh, yeah, bring—oh, okay,” he sighs, when the line goes dead. “I kinda hate that guy,” he says to the mech lying on the ground. “Ultra Magnus. You’ll meet him, um, in a few breems, I guess. Sorry about that. Hey, you gotta name?”

The mech coughs and shudders—one hand lifts to touch the mask on his face, clawing at it as if he doesn’t know how to remove it. Wingsaber stares for a moment, then leans forward, cautiously running a hand along the bottom ridge of the mech’s helmet.

“Uh—there’s usually a…” He finds the pressure release and presses it, and the battlemask parts in the middle and its halves retract into either side of the mech’s helmet. The mech turns his helm to the side and coughs again, and Wingsaber scrambles back a bit to avoid getting flecked with energon.

A beat passes before he realizes the mech is trying to speak around the shuddering gasps he’s heaving in through his intakes. Wingsaber leans down, frowning.

“What was that?”

“Optimus,” the mech wheezes, just barely audible. “My name is…Optimus Prime.”

Wingsaber draws back, mouthplates open. The mech’s intakes sputter and he goes limp. Wingsaber hurriedly reaches for the carotid energon line and breathes a sigh when he detects a pulse.

“Well, call me Unicron and smite me here,” he mutters, shaking his helm. Then he winces and glances at the ceiling. “Uh, actually, don’t. Sorry about that.”

 

* * *

 

“Repeat what you just said.”

Wingsaber—who lacks the willpower to stand up to a normal mech, much less a mech likes Ultra Magnus—gulps audibly and shifts in his seat. “He said his name was Optimus Prime, sir.”

“Impossible,” Magnus says flatly, and Ratchet winces at his tone. Wingsaber looks positively ready to wilt. “The only living Prime is Sentinel Prime. There are no others. You must have misheard him.”

“I swear that’s what he said, sir,” Wingsaber says miserably, casting a glance at Ratchet, who looks away and down at his patient.

His patient who is either an actual envoy sent by Primus and was magicked into Vector Sigma’s mainframe, or the single craziest and sneakiest slagger literally ever. Either way, he’s definitely the luckiest. A heavily armed Elite Guard squadron, headed by Ultra Magnus (with Wingsaber in tow) delivered the unconscious mech to Ratchet’s medical bay several joors earlier, guns and swords drawn on a prisoner who, in Ratchet’s professional medical opinion, may never wake up again. It was literally impossible for this mech to have survived whatever did— _that_ to him, and yet. And there was also the matter of that strange matrix encircling his spark, which had kept him miraculously stable without Ratchet’s intervention through the joors and joors he’d spent laboring over the mech in surgery.

Ratchet steps back a moment to admire his handiwork. Salvaging the mech’s chest will take time—he’s got it patched, at least, all the delicate bits covered with temp plating and welds that he’ll replace when he figures out where the mech’s frame comes from. There’s something vaguely Iaconian about it, but only just—it’s not a frame type Ratchet is familiar with, and he’s seen them all, or just about. He hums to himself, tapping his fingers on his folded arms, so absorbed in his musings that Ultra Magnus has to nearly shout his name to get his attention.

“What?” Ratchet snaps around. “What, what? What are you yelling about? I have patients who are trying to recharge.”

“Correction, you have a _prisoner_ in recharge,” Ultra Magnus says flatly.

Ratchet rolls his optics. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, first off, and second off, I have more to deal with than just you Elite Guard and your slag-ups. Any chance you’re done tormenting poor Wingsaber? Kid’s told you all he knows.”

“I need you to wake the prisoner.”

With a snort, the medic turns to his unconscious patient and taps him on the shoulder. “Hello in there? Feel like talking to the most unpleasant mech in existence? No? Didn’t think so. Sorry, Magnus, I can take a message if you’d like.”

“This is serious,” Magnus deadpans.

“I’m sure. But our friend here won’t be waking up anytime soon. Maybe give him a few joors to, oh, I don’t know, regrow his sparkcase before you haul him off to the smelting pools?”

Ultra Magnus bristles; Wingsaber looks from the medic to the city commander and back again, optics wide. At length, Magnus growls and lowers his shoulders with a curt nod.

“Alert me the moment he wakes.”

“Aye, sir,” Ratchet says, snapping off a salute on the wrong hand. Magnus turns on his heel and marches out of the room without another word. Snorting, Ratchet waits until he’s heard the soldier’s titanic footsteps fade before turning back to his patient. “Wingsaber, pass me that tray, would you?”

“Uh. This one?”

“Yep.” Ratchet places the tray on his patient’s berth and loads up a syringe. With practiced precision, he injects the stimulant into the mech’s lateral fuel line, watching the monitor displaying his patient’s vitals, and smiles faintly when the mech groans and stirs.

Wingsaber actually gasps. “You _lied_ to Magnus?”

“Sure did.” Ratchet leans over the mech, feeling around the dark blue helmet until he finds the medical interface port hidden beneath his audio. He plugs in and waits through a systems diagnostic, scrutinizing his patient carefully. “Can you hear me?”

A pause—and then, through a vocalizer laced with static, barely audible, a feeble “Yes.”

“Do you know your name?”

“…Optimus. Prime.”

Ratchet and Wingsaber exchange a look. Wingsaber shrugs. Told you.

“Do you know where you are?”

The mech’s helm tips from side to side once. Ratchet hums, withdrawing his syringe and loading another.

“This is a civilian medical bay in Kaon. You’re safe. Do you remember how you were injured?”

“Megatronus.” The mech groans, shifting on the berth, and Ratchet hurriedly plants a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, hey. Lie still. Did you say Megatronus? You mean that gladiator? The one from here? He…?”

“He killed them…” The mech—Optimus Prime, supposedly—unshutters his optics, which online slowly. They are a dark, deep cerulean. “The High Council, Megatronus, he…Iacon’s fallen…”

Ratchet looks up slowly, meets Wingsaber’s gaze. The young flier stares back at him. Without a word, they both uplink to the Cybertron news network. Nothing. Not a peep. If the High Council _were_ dead, would Sentinel Prime let anyone know?

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Wingsaber says lowly, getting down from his seat.

“Be subtle,” Ratchet says, and looks back down at his patient as Wingsaber hurries from the room. “Alright. I’m going to give you something for the pain. If a huge mech with a permanent scowl comes in, you play dead. Got it?”

“Doctor,” the mech mumbles, catching Ratchet’s arm, “where…where is she?”

Ratchet frowns. “She?”

“She was there with me…in the cavern, she…the light.”

Ratchet shakes his head, removing the mech’s hand and placing it back on the berth. He injects the contents of the second syringe into the carotid line. Faster delivery. “Wingsaber found you bleeding out on the floor of Vector Sigma. That’s all I know. He didn’t mention anyone else being there with you. Who’re you referring to? I can try and look her up.”

“I don’t know,” the mech murmurs. A long, low sigh whooshes from his frame, and he sinks back against the berth, recharge protocols getting the better of him. Ratchet stares at him a moment longer before shaking his head and stepping out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Two Elite Guards flank it on either side.

“You boys haven’t heard anything about Iacon falling, have you?” Ratchet asks with false cheer. They stare at him, unspeaking. “Didn’t think so.”

He moves onto his next patient, praying that foreboding feeling in his spark was just the paranoia of age. Nothing more.

 

* * *

**_Before_ **

* * *

“I’ve been thinking,” Ariel says, tapping her stylus on his datapad, “and I think we should go to Tarn.”

Orion lifts his head. His normal workstation felt too stifling today—they’ve relocated to the spacious library on the floor below, surrounded by terminals and as many physical datapads as they could possibly want. Their materials are spread out across the table, a haphazard mix of background on Tarn and its castes as well as the constant streams of updates about the miner rebellions. The rebellions have spread to other low castes, laborers rising up all across the territory, forming local militia. That the Elite Guard will be deployed soon to quell the uprising is almost a given, and there are rumors they’ve already established martial law and kept it from the press.

“Us?” Orion says, blinking. “You and me? Go to Tarn?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Why?_ ”

She frowns, tapping his datapad again more pointedly. “Come _on,_ Orion. You’re a historian, and history is happening _right now_. Don’t you want to go see it with your own optics?”

“Uh. No? Not if doing so could get me killed.”

Ariel huffs, looking back down at her notes. “Well, I’m gonna go.”

“That’s a really horrendous idea.”

“Good thing it’s not your decision.”

“I am technically the project supervisor.”

“Then fire me,” she says, looking up at him, challenging him to meet her gaze.

He coughs and turns his head away. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.” She lifts up a datapad, the one containing a report of the High Council’s musings over whether to send in the Elite Guard. “Look, you play obedient civil servant, and I get why. And I respect it. But you’ve been around long enough to know that this is bullslag. Whatever is happening in Tarn is _much_ bigger than what they’re telling us. And you know it has something to do with that gladiator in Kaon.”

“That’s just a hunch,” Orion says. “I just thought the timing was conspicuous—it could be a coincidence.”

“Could be. Or it could be connected, and we could be on the cusp of a planetwide revolution that might topple the caste system. But we won’t ever know if we sit here diligently cataloguing half-truths.” She drops the datapad in his lap and turns from the table.

“Where are you going?”

“Just want a walk. To clear my head.”

Orion watches her stride out, then sighs and looks down at the datapad. _High Council Convenes: Possibility of Tarn Intervention on Table._ Yeah, it’s almost certainly nonsense. It’s a façade—of course the High Council doesn’t want the wider populace to know that they intend on putting down the rebellions of Tarn with all the brute force they can muster. It might set an example, but it might also trigger an outcry, and several Council seats were up for grabs over the next few solar cycles. And a publicized armed response would make it clear to all that the Council took the rebellions seriously—that they were afraid. Better to laugh it off as a minor inconvenience and silence it quietly.

Orion picks up the datapad, heavily annotated with her tidy scrawl. With a sigh, he sets it down and gets to his feet, setting off for the lift. From the bottom floor he steps out onto the bright pavilion that surrounds the Hall of Records, wincing a little in the sunlight, casting his gaze around for Ariel. He’ll never get into recharge tonight if he doesn’t at least try to talk her out of going to Tarn—he admires her courage, but it really might get her—

He stops. He’s found Ariel, but she’s with someone—a tall flier who currently has arms around her, holding her close. Very close. As Orion watches, Ariel dodges a kiss, turning her head away, and her gaze falls on him. She hastily steps away from the bot holding her, and Orion realizes with a swooping horror that he has to approach now that he’s made optic contact. Praying a bit of space debris will rain down at that exact moment and kill him instantly, he walks over to the pair.

“Sorry,” he says, looking awkwardly at the tall flier now scrutinizing him. “I just—um. Wanted to make sure you were…”

“I’m fine,” Ariel cuts in. “Orion, this is Fly-By. He’s my—I’m—uh, we’re together. Fly-By, this is Orion Pax. My partner on the Tarn project?—I told you about him.”

“Yeah. Pleasure.” Fly-By extends a stiff hand, and Orion shakes. They break apart as quickly as possible. Fly-By ducks his head and kisses Ariel’s cheek. “See you tonight?”

“Sure.” She waves him off, refusing to meet Orion’s optics. Fly-By gives him another pointed light before transforming and screaming off into the sky, perhaps more showily than was necessary.

Orion clears his vocalizers when Ariel neither looks up nor speaks. “He seems. Nice.”

“He’s kind of an aft,” she retorts. Orion doesn’t know how to reply to that, so he doesn’t, looking down at his feet instead. She sighs and folds her arms over her chest. “Sorry. For walking out on you like that.”

“It’s alright.” He’s overcome by the sudden and absurd desire to touch her, to put his hands around hers. He gives himself a shake. “Ariel, regardless of whether the Elite Guard has intervened, Tarn is ludicrously unstable.”

“I know.”

“You’d be putting yourself in danger going there.”

“I know.”

“What do you even hope to accomplish?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” she snaps, finally looking up at him, her optics ablaze. “But doesn’t it make you _mad?_ Aren’t you going out of your processors just sitting around recording it all second-hand?”

“No. That’s my function.”

“People are getting hurt.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

She sets her jaw and looks away from him, optics narrowing. “You don’t know that.”

“I’m not a soldier!” he says, more harshly than he meant to, and she flinches. “Look, I—I’m an archivist. My function is to log whatever comes my way so that history won’t forget. That’s what I can _do_ , and I intend to do it to the best of my ability. If that’s not enough for you, maybe—maybe you  _shouldn’t_ be on the project, after all.”

Ariel looks at him. The fire’s out in her optics, and the look she levels at him is icy, so frigid it sends a shiver down his spinal strut. “Maybe you’re right,” she says flatly.

She subspaces a small item and tosses it to him, and he only barely catches it—it’s her Hall of Records access key. Without another word, she turns on her heel and strides off, taking the stairs three at a time and transforming the second her pede is at road level. She hits the road with a squeal of tires and peels off, leaving Orion staring after her, dumbstruck.

“Frag,” he says out loud nearly a breem later, once the shock has begun to wear off. He looks down at the slender cylinder in his hand, which she had already painted pink.

 


	3. Kinda punky, sappy lyrics

* * *

 

**_Before_ **

* * *

 

The footage is grainy, low-res. A white flier settles into a chair, looking uncomfortable, shifting his wings to and fro before he clears his vocalizers and lifts his golden optics to some point just over the camera.

“Is it recording?”

“Yeah,” a voice replies off-screen—a femme, by the sound of it. “Go ahead.”

The mech hauls in an intake, ex-vents. Shifts again and looks at the camera. “Hi. Uh. My name is Jetfire. I’m a dock worker at the Tarn Transport Hub. By the time you see this—if anyone sees it, I guess—I’ll be in hiding. And so will my co-conspirator here,” he adds, indicating whoever is behind the camera. A hand appears briefly to wave into the lens, then disappears. Jetfire continues.

“I don’t know what you know about what’s happening in Tarn—maybe nothing. But the bottom line is that—I guess it’s that we can’t take it anymore.” He sighs and leans forward, rubbing his helm between his hands. “This is hard. I just—it’s _bad_ here. That’s what no one tells you about the caste system is—is how bad it is at the bottom. I need—we need something to change. _Something’s_ gotta give, because we—we’re not even people, here. Can’t even scrape by. There’s not enough of—of anything. And it must be out there somewhere, because the top castes do fine, but it’s not…here. And we can’t get to it. So.” He lifts his helm, sighs. “Look, we don’t need anything handed to us, we just…we want a shot. If we’re going to break our backstruts every cycle, _all_ cycle, we at least need somewhere to come home to.” He tips his chin, looking again at the femme filming. “I’d really like to put a roof over her head, you know.”

Jetfire gives his helm a shake and looks back into the lens. A silver battlemask obscures his features, but his optics are fiery. “Listen. If you want the truth—the _whole_ truth, not what the Council and the Senate are selling you over the official channels—we’re going to broadcast in five orns, at 0800, from this frequency.” Glyphs appear on the bottom half of the screen. Ariel triple-checks to make sure she’s written them down correctly. “The passkey is the gladiator’s name. We can’t do this on our own anymore. If you’re listening—if you can help, or if you’re in our position, or…if _anything_ , please. Don’t let them get away with the _lies_ anymore. If we’re going to die here, at least…please make sure someone at least knows about it.”

He hands his helm for a moment, quiet, then sighs and looks at the bot behind the camera. “Let’s—”

The holoscreen abruptly shuts off, and Ariel whirls around with an indignant _“Hey!”_ Redlight frowns, tossing the remote aside.

“You’ve been watching that on repeat for the last two orns. Give it a rest, Ariel. It’s such a drag.”

“It’s _important._ ” Ariel fetches the remote off the floor.

“Oh, come _on_.” Redlight plops onto the couch beside her, putting on her best pout. “Let’s go out tonight.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

Fly-By snorts as he moseys from his berthroom toward their energon supply. “Guess we gotta face facts, Redlight, she’s over us.”

“You’re not even on that project anymore,” Redlight says, ignoring him. “You got fired, yeah? Why do you still care?”

“The Elite Guard declared _martial law_ , Redlight. That’s _huge_. That hasn’t happened in _eons_.” Ariel scrubs the video forward, trying to find her spot. “And I didn’t get fired, I left.”

“Yeah, but it’s in _Tarn._ That’s, like, a bazillion light years from here.”

“It’s four provinces over.”

Redlight turns to Fly-By, who is nursing a cube of highgrade. “Hey, help me out here. She’s obsessed.”

Fly-By heaves a long-suffering sigh and strides around to the other side of the couch. “Look, darling, maybe give it a rest, huh? Redlight’s right. You’re getting fixated. Let’s go to Maccadams’ for a bit, cut loose. You’ll feel better after a cube or two.”

Ariel looks from one to the other, weighing their words carefully. At length, she sighs, sets aside the remote, and gets to her feet. “Yeah. Okay. So—”

Fly-By brightens at once. “Great, let’s—”

“—I’m gonna move out.”

Fly-By and Redlight exchange a look. Then he bursts into laughter. “What? Darling, come on—”

“Don’t call me that,” she interrupts, glaring at him. “I _hate_ when you call me that.”

“What?” He blinks, taken aback, and his mouthplates slide into a frown. “You’ve never told me that.”

“Yes, I have. You just don’t listen.” Ariel sighs and steps out of the room, heading into the berthroom they share. Possessions-wise, she doesn’t have much—mostly datapads, a few trinkets. A fair collection of rocks from various worlds. Stupid thing to collect, rocks. She should have thought of something lighter to collect. She subspaces what she can and pops open a small cargo container for the rest.

Fly-By and Redlight follow her into the room, both looking aghast. “Are you serious?” Redlight demands. “You’re _leaving_? What, because we don’t want to watch the most _miserable_ vids with you? Come _on_ , Ariel.”

“That’s not why.” Ariel lines her datapads carefully at the bottom of the crate. “I think I’m just ready to move on.”

“Move on? What, from us?”

“Mm. It’s not really about you guys. I think it’s more this whole…” Ariel waves her hand absently around the room. “Really this whole situation. I just don’t think this is my endgame.”

Redlight folds her arms over her chest. “So you’re saying you’re too _good_ for this.”

Ariel sighs and looks at her friend. “That’s not it, either.”

“Then what do you _want_?”

Ariel pauses, gives that some thought. “I guess I don’t know.” The archivist—she’s been stubbornly refusing to even think of him by name, she’s still so fragged off with him—flashes through her processor, and she scowls. “But it’s not this.”

Fly-By throws his hands into the air. “This is crazy. You’re crazy, you know that? We’re done, by the way, you get that, right?”

“Yeah, that’s probably for the best,” Ariel says, a little absently, packing a last quartz carefully and snapping the cargo lid closed. She hups it onto her hip, tucking it under her arm, and turns to face her roommates. “Well, I’m gonna go.”

“Just like _that?_ Wait—” Redlight chases her out of the room, grasping at her hand. “Wait, where are you gonna go? Shouldn’t we—” She looks back at Fly-By. “Shouldn’t we all talk about this? We’ve been friends for…Ariel, this isn’t _fair_.”

Ariel smiles, pulling her friend in for a one-armed hug. “We’re still friends, Red. Promise. There’s just stuff I have to do.”

“Like _what?_ Ariel—”

“I’ll call you,” Ariel says, nudging the door open with a foot, and offers a “Bye” over her shoulder before the door closes behind her.

And then she’s standing in the hallway, with everything she owns in her arms, with nowhere to go. She should be worried—pretty substantially worried, actually—but she’s not, somehow. On the contrary, she feels a little excited fluttering in her spark. She turns on her heel, looking at the door she’s walked through every orn for the last four solar cycles. The 427 painted on the door has never looked so friendly. She smiles, waves at the fading number, and heads for the stairs.

She’s free. Untethered. She did it—changed her life, completely, in about two breems. Wasn’t the most graceful exit, but at least now she—

—can forget to look where she’s going and slam headlong into someone on the stairwell, apparently. Ariel topples onto her aft, the cargo crate hitting the floor and exploding open, showering her and her victim and the stairs with everything she owns. She groans, holding her faceplates where they collided with the other bot’s exceptionally solid chest, groping blindly for her crate.

“Frag—sorry—I’m so—”

“No, I—hang on, let me—ow—”

She freezes, lowering her hand. Orion Pax is staring back at her, one hand on his chestplates—which now sport an actual dent—and his optics wide. He drops the handful of datapads he clearly just retrieved and swears, scooping to pick them back up.

“Ariel. I. Uh. I’m sorry, I…” He trails off, then coughs and hands her the cargo crate. “Um. Here.”

“Thanks.” She props it open and accepts the datapads he hands her. They collect her possessions in silence so heavy it’s oppressing. She can’t help but steal glances at him when she thinks he’s not looking, until their optics accidentally meet as he looks up at the same moment. She looks away hastily.

“Sorry, I—holy Primus, Orion, what’d you do?”

Another mech, not even half Orion’s height, appears at the bottom of the stairs, mouthplates hanging open. He jogs up to join them, laughing, and bends to pick up a handful of quartz.

“Slag, my good pal, you took a femme out, and not in, uh, a good way, by the looks of things. You okay?”

“Yes,” she says, packing away the last of the spillage. She’s a little surprised when Orion stands and offers her a hand, but swallows her pride just long enough to take it and let him help her up.

“This is my friend Jazz,” he says, dropping her hand quickly and stooping to pick up her crate. “Jazz, this is Ariel. We—uh, worked together. Briefly.”

“Oh, yeah—she’s the one you fired like an absolute slaghead,” Jazz says cheerfully. He shoots Ariel a wink behind Orion’s back, ignoring his scowl. “Sorry about him. He’s literally terrible.”

“I didn’t think he was so bad,” Ariel says, holding her arms out for her crate. Orion pauses halfway toward giving it to her, looking at her in surprise. She offers him an awkward smile and takes her things from his arms. “Thanks. And sorry for running you over.”

“It’s—quite alright.” Orion steps back, rubbing the back of his helm. “I, um—what are you doing, exactly?”

“Oh. I just, uh. I just moved out.”

His optic ridges lift. “You—just moved out.”

“Yeah. Sort of an…” She shrugs. “An impulse move, I guess.”

“That’s—” Orion sighs and pinches the bridge of his noseplates. “Ariel, that’s not a _thing_.”

“Uh, it is now,” Jazz interjects. “Where’s your new place? Need help moving?”

“Nope.” Ariel hoists the crate a little higher in her arms. “This is it. And, uh, I don’t know yet, I guess.”

Orion lowers his hand, frowning. “What do you mean, you don’t know yet?”

“Well, I decided to move out literally five breems ago, so I don’t know where I’m going, exactly.” She tilts her head. “Huh. Should have thought of that, I guess.”

“You—” Orion stares at her like she’s the first bot he’s ever seen. He heaves a titanic sigh. “Yes, you should have.”

“Well, slag,” Jazz says, looking from Ariel and then up at Orion and back again. “Maybe she should stay with you.”

“She _what_?”

“Don’t be a dumbaft. There’s a lady in need! You’ve got a spare room and everything.”

“I don’t—Jazz, that’s _my_ room.”

“He says that,” Jazz whispers loudly to Ariel, pointlessly cupping a hand around his mouthplates, “but he crashes on his couch every night in front of the holoscreen.”

“I can find a place,” Ariel says, a little worried that Orion, who is twitching, might actually fritz on the spot. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about—”

“You wanna at least come upstairs?” Jazz offers. “He’s on the seventh floor, which is a pain, but it’s not a bad place.”

“No, I—” Ariel stops. “You live here? In this complex?”

“Yes?” Orion shifts his weight on his pedes.

“I assumed—” Ariel stops, looks at Jazz, frowns, looks back up at Orion. “Huh. I thought you’d live somewhere—nicer. Or at least closer to the Hall of Records?”

“Low-ranking archivists don’t get paid slag,” Jazz sighs, putting what he must think is a comforting hand on Orion’s shoulder, which he has to stretch to reach. “Poor thing’s stipend is a joke. You should say something to someone about that,” he adds, pointing a finger at Orion. “Stand up for yourself! Workers’ rights! Solidarity!”

“I really don’t like you right now,” Orion mutters, rubbing his optics. “Ariel, I’m sorry, I’m sure you have things to—”

“I’m coming up.”

“What?”

“If that’s okay.” She shrugs. “It’s not like I have anywhere to be. And I could kinda use a breem to collect myself.”

“Great!” Jazz claps his hands together. “Orion, take her things, would you?”

“How is—what—” Through his stuttering, though, Orion holds his arms out, and Ariel smiles as she slides the cargo crate into them.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome?” he replies, shaking his head. “I think?”

Jazz leads the way up the three remaining flights of stairs, chattering the whole time. Orion trails behind him, and Ariel brings up the rear, struggling a little to keep up with Orion’s wide gait. He takes three steps at a time with ease, and somehow, no matter how she tries to keep pace, his aft is always at her optic level. Which isn’t so bad, incidentally. He really _is_ cute. Between his aft looking pretty enticing and him being awfully sweet to her (even so reluctantly) in this moment of need, she almost forgets that she’s still officially furious with him.

But he said what he did because he was worried about her. Which was a little sweet, too, in a really annoying way.

“Here we are,” Jazz announces at the door of 707, as if it’s his apartment. Orion sighs and steps around him, unlocking the door. He and Jazz troop in, but Ariel hovers for a moment on the threshold. It feels like a precipitous moment, somehow. She takes a small breath and steps inside.

Orion’s apartment is pretty much what she expected—not very stylish but pleasant, very tidy without feeling sanitized. She closes the door and stays in the entryway, looking around while Jazz chatters. Orion sets her crate on his countertop and turns to her, looking sheepish.

“This is, uh. This is it. Not very impressive, I know.”

“A lot cleaner than my old place,” she says, smiling. “Fly-By is a slob.”

He looks at her for a moment like he wants to ask more, but seems to think better of it, turning toward the cooler nearby. “Have you refueled?”

Ariel sighs. “Why are you always so worried about my energy levels?”

“Just trying to be hospitable,” he mumbles, embarrassed, and hides behind the cooler’s open door, fishing around inside. Ariel smiles at the twitching antennae just visible over the door and finally steps into the apartment, perching herself on the chic little couch. Jazz has busied himself with what appears to be a stereo system, humming and flipping through discs.

“Where’s the new album by that group from the Taurus states? Kinda punky, sappy lyrics?”

Orion pops up from behind the cooler, frowning. “Slagmouth?”

“That’s the one.”

“In my room.”

Jazz heads through a door in the back of the room, leaving it ajar behind him while he presumably goes through Orion’s things. Ariel leans over the back of the couch, a little mystified. She’s only seen one other mech’s room, and that was Fly-By’s, which was her room, too. She catches a glimpse of the berth but can’t gauge its quality before Jazz reappears and shuts the door behind him. Ariel hurriedly turns around. Orion settles down on the couch, technically beside her but more than an arm’s length away, and offers her a stunningly large cube of energon.

“They’re proportioned for my frame type,” he says, with an apologetic shrug.

“My favorite part of hanging out here,” Jazz chuckles. He finally succeeds in getting the disc into the system, and sharp staccato notes float out of the speakers. “Blaster really likes these guys. I’m reserving my judgment for another album or two.”

“Didn’t figure you for a music connoisseur,” Ariel says, lifting an optic ridge and looking at Orion.

He shrugs one shoulder. “I’m not. Most of it belongs to someone else.”

“Yours?” she inquires of Jazz.

“Nah.” The small mech plops down between them, swiping Orion’s energon right out of his hand. “This absolute slaghead of a mech he dated for a while. What was his name?”

“I forget,” Orion says with perfect neutrality, snatching his energon back.

“Liar,” Jazz snorts. “He was a real rough one, I remember that much. Hung out at Blaster’s club when it was still open.”

Ariel has decided that the music is jarringly unpleasant, but says nothing. She drinks from her energon cube to avoid having to contribute to the increasingly uncomfortable commentary from Jazz about Orion’s ex, and stifles a snort when she glances up to see Orion doing the exact same. His optics meet hers and soften, just a little.

“So why’d you move?” Jazz asks, turning to Ariel with all the enthusiasm and attention of a professional documentarian.

“Oh. Um.” She sets down her energon cube and shrugs. “I was just fed up, I think?”

“Roommate issues? That’s the worst.”

“Yes, that. But also—I don’t know. Maybe I just needed a change.”

“Did it go alright, at least?”

“Not really.” She sighs and leans back against the couch. “I was dating one of my roommates. He broke up with me.”

“Wait—just now?” Jazz blinks, and the eager grin on his face melts away. Suddenly the picture of solemnity, he sits upright and opens an arm. “Are you okay? Aw, come here, sweetspark, your friend Jazz will—”

“Wait,” Orion interrupts, his antennae perking. “That flier? It’s over?”

“It’s over,” Ariel confirms, smiling and dodging the embrace Jazz offers. “No, I’m fine—really. I wasn’t happy with him. It’s better this way.”

“The problem is that you’re too hot to get dumped,” Jazz says, and Ariel bursts into laughter. “I’m serious! Go get back with him so _you_ can dump _him_. Put the universe back in order, please, before catastrophe befalls all of us.”

“To be clear, that’s not him hitting on you,” Orion snorts.

“No, alas, my spark belongs to another,” Jazz says, placing a hand over his spark. “But it still wounds me deeply to see a young, beautiful femme cast aside unjustly. You know what, we’re all too hot and definitely too young to be this morose—you got any highgrade?”

“Not since you cleaned me out last cycle,” Orion says with a heavy sigh.

“Orion, it’s a _bachelor pad_ , please treat it as such,” Jazz chides, getting to his feet. “I’ll go out and get some. Mind if I invite some people over while I’m at it?”

“What?— _yes_ I mind if—!”

“Eh, you know what, I’m gonna invite people over. Ariel, you cool with that? Of course you are. Right, see you in a bit!”

Jazz waves as he all but skips out the door, shutting it cheerily behind him—Ariel is fairly sure he’s the only mech in existence who can make closing a door emotive—leaving Orion staring after him in horror and Ariel struggling to contain her giggles.

“I hate him,” Orion says hollowly into the silence, and Ariel dissolves, sinking back on the couch and laughing with her face in her hands. “I hate him so, so much.”

“He’s _great_.”

“He’s a nightmare! He’s always doing this! Coming over unannounced, using my place as his private social club, doing whatever he—” Orion stops—perhaps because he’s just realized that he and Ariel are alone together. They stare at one another for much longer than is appropriate; the leader singer of Slagmouth croons something about nuts and bolts in the background. Orion jerks his head away so quickly Ariel is genuinely concerned he may have popped something. “Um. Do you need energon?”

She quirks an optic ridge and lifts her cube, still three-quarters full.

“Right.” He fiddles with a non-existent imperfection on the couch. Ariel stares at him and realizes she’s smiling. He is awkward, annoying, sometimes blunt to the point of being rude, terrible at conversation, too pragmatic. He’s not her type. He is, in fact, the exact polar opposite of her type.

So why does she think she might _like_ him a little?

“Hey,” she says, and extends a leg to nudge her foot against his calf. He jumps so badly his plates rattle and looks at her. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“For—” She pauses. “Well, for the way we left things, for starters. I liked that job, and I should have fought harder for it.”

“You didn’t—I mean, you’re still employed as a scribe, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. But that was the first special request they put me up for.” She sighs and tucks her legs beneath her. “And, I mean, there’ll be more, eventually. Probably something boring.” She shrugs, smiles at him. “You were the first one to give me the chance to document something that really matters, and I let my temper mess that up. So I’m sorry.”

Whenever he looks at her, he always does it longer than he should—it’s like he forgets there’s another responsive bot in the room with him. For a few astroseconds too long, it’s as if he gets lost in his own world and expects everyone else to put it all on pause. She realizes she doesn’t mind that.

“I’m sorry, too,” he says at length, his words careful and measured as always. “I…also let my temper get the better of me. You were very helpful. The project has suffered for your absence.”

“I’m also sorry for crashing your place. And possibly giving Jazz a reason to start a party.”

Orion sighs, long-suffering, and runs a hand over his faceplates. “Unfortunately, he never _needs_ a reason.”

“You two don’t seem to have a lot in common.”

“We don’t.” Orion tilts his head, leveling a contemplative look into his energon. “But he’s a good mech. When he’s not being irritating, I like spending time with him. And he can be very accommodating, and a good listener. I like his partner, too. And he did introduce me to Blaster, I suppose, so—” He stops and clears his vocalizers. “Um. Anyway. He’s… a good friend. I’m lucky he bothered with me.”

Ariel grins. “Aw, you’re really pretty soft under all that ‘this is my function’ stiffness, huh?”

“No,” he mumbles, avoiding her optics. “It’s stiff all the way down.”

Ariel sips her energon and counts the astroseconds. Exactly twelve pass before Orion sits bolt upright and whirls to look at her.

“That’s not—”

“Stiff all the way down, huh.”

“That is _not_ —I didn’t mean—” He groans and dumps his face into his hands. “Primus, please kill me.”

She dissolves into laughter, setting down her energon when it threatens to spill, and after a beat he peeks out from behind his hands and smiles sheepishly.

That unfortunate slip of the glossa dissipates the last of the tension in the room. They talk, and she’s surprised at how easy it is. He never says the right thing at the right time, but he does know how to listen, knows which questions to ask and which to avoid. She recounts her sudden move-out, complains about Fly-By, laments hurting Redlight, complains a little more about Fly-By, and Orion listens, humming and “uh-huh”ing occasionally, but mostly just listening, his optics fixed on her with careful, intimate attention. She thinks she might be on the verge of getting him to open up about something—anything—when Jazz saunters back in, this time accompanied by a veritable gaggle of bots, none of whom Ariel recognizes.

“I thought you were _kidding_!” Orion squawks, getting to his feet when his apartment is suddenly invaded by no less than ten bots. “Jazz!”

“Oh yeah, this is another party held against Orion’s will,” Jazz says over the heads of his invitees. “And the cute little number trying to hide behind the couch is Ariel, who just got dumped today!”

That gets a loud cheer from the assembly of bots—Ariel flinches and gives a small wave. Orion, sighing as Jazz passes around highgrade, makes introductions—that’s Prowl, the one over there is Sideswipe, Hot Rod, whom she should apparently ignore, Arcee and Windblade—Ariel does her best to follow along, feeling overwhelmed, and only becoming more so when a spark-haltingly beautiful femme interjects before Orion can name her and bends down to kiss Ariel’s hand.

“Chromia,” she says. “Sorry about the breakup.”

“It’s. Uh.” Ariel blinks rapidly, lowering her gaze. “It’s alright.”

“Think of it as an opportunity.” Chromia winks at her, then straightens and turns to Orion. She makes a shooing motion with her hand. “Scoot, handsome.”

Orion rolls his optics and makes to move, but she interrupts with a tutting noise and points her finger in the opposite direction. Arching an optic ridge, he moves over, and Ariel’s spark jumps when Chromia sits down right next to her.

“So.” The femme rests her cheekplates on her fist. Her optics _smolder_. How does she get them to do that? “What do you do, Ariel?”

“She’s a—”

Chromia turns her head and silences Orion with one raised optic ridge. “I was asking her.”

Orion closes his mouthplates.

“Oh, I like her,” Ariel giggles. Orion scowls at her, but Chromia turns back to her with a grin that is positively luminous.

“The feeling is mutual, darlin’.”

Ariel smiles sweetly at her. “I hate being called that.”

“Noted. Can I get you a cube of highgrade?”

“Please.”

Chromia’s grin widens, and she gets up from the couch, sauntering over to Jazz’s distribution chain. Ariel settles back in her seat and looks at Orion with an imperious lift of her chin. He shakes his head with a muttered “Unbelievable,” and when Sideswipe comes over to offer him a drink, he downs it in one.

 

* * *

 

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

“Drink up.”

The medic leans down, nudging him with the energon cube. Optimus doesn’t respond. With an impatient huff, Ratchet sets it down on the small table beside the bunk and busies himself with checking vitals.

“I will put you on a drip again. Don’t test me.”

Optimus doesn’t reply. He’s trying to listen to the voices in his head, trying to pick hers out, the one who helped him in the bowels of the planet. He’s beginning to feel that it’s hopeless—he doesn’t hear her anymore. The other voices are losing their distinctive qualities, fading to background noise. Whatever cataclysmic thing has happened seems to be wearing off.

Something sharp pricks his arm, and he jumps, frowning down at the line the medic has placed in the bend of his elbow.

“Told you,” Ratchet says, a touch smugly. “How are we feeling today?”

Optimus sighs and lets his helm drop back onto the berth. “Fine.”

“Scale of one to ten, one being no pain, ten being—”

“Three.”

Ratchet snorts. “And the real answer?”

“…Five.”

“Thank you. I can give you another dose of painkiller in a joor or so. I’ve got you booked for another surgery in two cycles, though no luck on finding the artisan who made your frame. You still don’t remember?”

Optimus shakes his head. Ratchet hums and draws a seat up to the berthside.

“I’d like to talk to you about what comes after,” he says, in a tone substantially gentler than his usual. Optimus looks at him suspiciously. “Once you’re stable, I’m going to lose a fair bit of power in this situation, and Ultra Magnus isn’t just going to let you walk. I can misreport your progress for a little while, but that mech is no fool. Eventually, he’s going to take you into custody.”

Optimus has no reply for that. He turns his head away.

“Nothing?” Ratchet drums his fingertips on the surface of the berth, sighing. “Nothing you can tell me? At all?”

“I don’t remember anything,” Optimus says dully. “I don’t _know_ anything.”

“You told me that a gladiator named Megatronus did this to you when Iacon fell. Which you somehow knew about before anyone else. How would you know that, given that you were apparently dying beside Vector Sigma in Kaon at the time?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know Megatronus? Why did he attack you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who told you that your name is Optimus Prime?”

“ _I don’t know!”_ In a rush of anger that surprises him, Optimus sweeps his arm to the side, ripping out the energon drip and knocking the cube to the floor, where it shatters. Horrified, he recoils, but Ratchet only blinks at him, face impassive. “I’m sorry,” Optimus bites out, voice shaking.

“That’s quite alright. Sudden flares in temper are common with head injuries.”

“I don’t have a head injury, do I.”

“No.”

Optimus sighs and presses his hands to his face—that annoying mask snapped back into place at some point, and he can’t figure out how to make it retract again. Why doesn’t he know anything about this body—about _his_ body? He hates feeling so _helpless_.

“It must be frustrating.”

He moves his hands, looks over at the medic, who has crouched to pick up the largest pieces of shattered cube. Ratchet glances up at him and shrugs.

“My mental faculties are the only thing I have going for me, as I’m sure you can surmise. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have my processors fail me.” He drops the glass into a nearby disposal container and takes his seat again, sighing. “For what it’s worth, I expect your memory will return. My diagnostic revealed very recent activity in your local memory banks before your systems expelled me. It’s simply a matter of navigating your firewalls to figure out what data remains and whether it can be read.”

Optimus is quiet for a moment. He stretches his arm out, and Ratchet replaces the line he tore free. “Why me?” he asks at length.

“Well, without knowing who you are, I can’t even hazard an answer.” Ratchet settles back, folding his hands on his knee. “You have a remarkable pain tolerance and a quick temper. You ostensibly have the preternatural ability to teleport into locked locations and to know things you shouldn’t. You also may be a Prime. And that’s all I know, I’m afraid.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Mm?”

“That I’m a Prime.” Optimus tilts his head, frowning. “It’s just—not possible.”

“You do know what a Prime is, then?”

“Yes.”

“See? You know something.” Ratchet makes a note on his datapad. “Do you know who the reigning Prime is?”

“No.”

“Do you know the function of the Council?”

“Yes.”

“Can you name any of its current members?”

“No.”

“What planet are we on?”

“Cybertron.”

“And where on Cybertron were you created?”

“I don’t know.”

Ratchet hums, tapping his stylus. “Very good. What we’re establishing here is that all you’re lacking is your local and contemporary memory—details about your own life and the current moment, but you have contextual memory. You know where you are, how the world around you works.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It’s a very good thing. It means that…” Ratchet pauses, seeming to weigh his next words. Optimus waits. “It means,” the medic continues, a little more softly, “that Magnus might be able to get exactly what he wants out of you. So. Maybe not such a good thing, after all.”

 

* * *

 

**_Before_ **

* * *

 

Orion can’t remember what happened.

He wakes up on his couch, which isn’t unusual. The holoscreen isn’t on, which _is_ unusual. He also hears the distinct sound of someone venting quietly nearby, which is downright bizarre. He moves to sit up and falls back with a hissed groan when his helm threatens to split in two. Only after the world stop its whirling about does he crack his optics open.

Bright light spills in from the window, illuminating his sitting room, which is an absolute disaster zone. Unconscious bots litter the floor; Sideswipe is curled up around Orion’s lower leg, snoring lightly. Orion shakes him loose and sits up, cradling his helm. His tanks churn. His optics blearily track around the room as small snippets of the night before start to come to him. Fragging _Jazz_. Of course he’s nowhere to be seen, nor is Prowl. Which means they probably skipped out late last night and left him with this mess.

Orion gets to his feet, sways unsteadily for a moment, and begins to shuffle toward his berth—or, more specifically, toward the waste disposal room adjoining his room, where he desperately wants to empty his tanks of the unprocessed highgrade currently making his life a living Pit. He steps over Arcee and pulls on his door, only to find it locked. Growling, he places a hand on the access pad on the wall and overrides the maglock. It swings open, and he steps in, his tanks just about to give up the fight—

Someone’s in his berth. Two someones,in fact. Chromia, specifically, her blue frame nestled between Ariel’s spread thighs. Orion freezes with one foot suspended in the air; Chromia lifts her head and arches an optic ridge; Ariel positively shrieks and flails, trying to find a thermal blanket and coming up empty.

“’Scuse you,” Chromia says.

“Sorry,” Orion responds, and then heaves, clapping a hand over his mouthplates. Without hazarding an excuse, he pushes off the door and sprints into the adjoining room, slamming the door shut behind him, and just manages to make it over the waste receptacle before his tanks violently eject their contents.

He ejects longer and harder than he has in—well, a fragging long time. It’s been a _while_ since his academy days, when that kind of highgrade consumption was his norm. He gives himself a few breems to recover, sitting on the floor with his helm between his hands. He hates his friends right at this moment. He hates them so, _so_ much.

Eventually, when he doesn’t think he can put it off any longer, he gets to his feet and opens the door. The femmes have abandoned his berth, leaving his room empty—a small blessing. He steps back into the sitting room to find Chromia bustling around his apartment, tossing empty cubes and rousing their groaning friends.

“Call Jazz and make him come clean up,” she advises, patting Hot Rod’s back as he staggers out the door. “And let Arcee recharge a little longer,” she adds, and Orion remembers at the last moment to step over the tiny femme. “Thanks for letting us use your place. Again.”

“Where’s—um.”

“Ariel?” Chromia flashes him a grin. “Waiting outside. Thought she was gonna fling herself out the window when you came in. I told her she could crash at my place until she gets her life sorted.”

Orion snorts. He bends to pick up Arcee, carrying her over to the couch and setting her down near Sideswipe. “That didn’t take you long.”

“Never does, my good mech.” She scoops Ariel’s small cargo crate off the counter, balancing it on her shoulder. “You’re just jealous you couldn’t lock her down.”

Orion opens his mouth to protest, but she’s already out the door. He faintly hears Ariel’s nervous tittering before the door slides closed again. Huffing to himself, he heads back into his room, throwing himself down into his berth and sending a mental command to the apartment’s mainframe. The lights dim and the door closes and locks, dousing him in dark and quiet. His head feels better at once.

He shutters his optics—and groans. The image of Chromia going down on his sort-of coworker is going to be burned into his optics for the rest of his mortal life. He tries to think about something else, anything else. Seeing that idiot Fly-By cradling her was bad enough. That irritated the absolute slag out of him. This is worse. This is worse by the _n_ th power. He rolls onto his back and glares at his ceiling, angry for no reason—and angry that he’s angry and even angrier that he’s angry for _no reason_. He barely knows Ariel. She can do whatever she wants with whoever she wants. She _is_ doing whatever she wants with whoever she wants. That’s her prerogative. It has nothing to do with him, and yet—

And yet.

Orion finds the thermal blanket pooled at the foot of the berth and drags it up over his helm. He’s too hungover for this. Whatever “this” is.


	4. No rest for the chivalrous

* * *

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

Alpha Trion doesn’t always know where he’s going. He just goes where he’s told. When he opens the Covenant and finds that the next few joors have been written, he sighs and goes. The future beckons.

He destination today is the ruins of downtown Iacon. Around him, a battle rages, a seemingly endless maelstrom. Iacon has been under siege for orns; early this morning, there was a break in its defenses, and Decepticons teemed through the city streets. Countless Autobots gunned down, slaughtered, taken utterly by surprise. Alpha Trion steps over bodies in the street, but he himself goes unmolested. Even the Seekers that shriek overhead don’t harass him.

He lets his feet carry him where they will, taking turns without forethought. He’ll wind up where he needs to be, or he won’t. Simple as that. What matters is that he makes the choices so that the multiverse unfolds. Where he turns right, the worlds splinter, and a phantom set of footsteps turns left. Alpha Trion watches the futures unravel before him, humming softly as he goes, a song of forgotten origins.

An arbitrary left turn brings him to Maccadam’s Old Oil Bar, and his neural net tingles. Not a coincidence, probably, to find himself on the doorstep of the long-time hiding spot of one of the Thirteen. It is abandoned, of course. Its patrons are warriors, or refugees, or dead. Individual futures are limited in outcome these dark days.

A run-down apartment complex catches his optic, and he steps through its front doors, into the lobby. The lift is down, which he expected. He climbs the stairs, aimless, listening but hearing nothing but gunfire in the distance.

He stops on the seventh floor, another arbitrary choice, but the paths that lead to this floor are numerous. He stands at the nexus of multiple realities, all somehow folded into the choices he makes here, on this landing. He looks up and down the hallway. There are a number of apartment units on either side of the stairway. The paths are so many that he can’t distinguish one from the next—they pile atop one another, a writhing network, almost a single plane. He frowns and rubs his optics for a moment. He can’t shake the feeling that his time is short. He has to choose.

He does. He chooses apartment 707, simply because the symmetry of its number pleases him in that moment. Examining the locked door, he wonders about the fate of the Alpha Trion who chose 706 instead, the one who stepped off the stairs on the third floor, the one who bypassed the complex completely. How fare their Cybertrons?

Another choice, then. The door is locked. He can force it, or he can give it up, select another apartment, or perhaps leave altogether. His helm aches faintly. He withdraws the small pistol that his aides insist he carry and fires three quick shots into the mag lock. The door groans and slides open a fraction, and he’s able to force it.

The apartment within is well kept, homey. The walls are brightly painted; it was an artist’s home, evidently, at some point. He steps inside, saying nothing, respecting its silence. Striding into the living room, he settles himself on the couch, casting his gaze around the room. Perhaps this is a choice with uninteresting consequences—he sits by himself a while in the dark before returning to the Hall of Records. That’s alright. One Alpha Trion, somewhere, made the correct choices, unlocked the sequence that mattered.

A photocube sits on the table before him. He traces his fingers across its surface and watches the image render. He is stunned to see the visage of a mech he recognizes in the image—Orion Pax, the archivist who had pursued the Kaon gladiator. To think that, by sheer chance, Alpha Trion has wandered into his own apprentice’s apartment. He lifts the cube gently, a curious malaise gripping his spark. Orion Pax is dead—or presumed dead. Murdered, apparently, along with the High Council the orn Megatronus—now Megatron—tried to bring the planet to its knees. Witnesses saw Megatron shoot Orion in the spark and kick his body into the chasm Trypticon punched into the planet’s surface.

Trion sighs and sets the cube aside. He hopes the Well of All Sparks, at least, is peaceful. Orion deserves that much. He was an unremarkable mech, but a good one—mostly kind, mostly well-intentioned. It was all that could be asked of a bot in this age. He simply had the bad fortune of drawing too close to a mech who possessed the fire and gravity of a sun.

Trion’s next choice, he will think later, is not his own. He ought to leave, to respect the sanctity of the dead mech’s home, to leave it as he left it. But he feels a tugging from an inexplicable source, a sort of compulsion. He gets to his feet and walks with unidentifiable purpose toward the door at the back of the apartment. The door is ajar. Alpha Trion hesitates no more than a moment before pulling it open.

He stills. There’s a body in the berth—a dead femme. Energon glistens on the berth’s surface. Alpha Trion approaches slowly, crouching at the berthside. She wears an insignia he doesn't recognize, has a small, civilian-approved pistol strapped to her hip. Her injuries are terrible, but with care, they might have been treatable—she probably died slowly. Painfully. Trion passes a hand over her helm, murmuring a prayer in a dead language to an entity who hasn’t answered in eons.

The energon is still wet, fresh. She couldn’t have died more than a breem or two ago. He was so close—

Beneath his hand, the femme stirs. His attention snaps downward. He must have imagined it—but, no, there, when he places his hand against the side of her neck, he feels the faintest, weakest pulse.

Alpha Trion opens his comm link, tuning in to the emergency frequency established a joor ago. He waits through the static, pump rushing, staring down at the femme, who could slip away at any moment—

“You’ve reached the emergency response unit. Please give your coordinates.”

He does, then adds, for good measure, “My name is Alpha Trion. I need a med-evac and a capable medic. I’ll be waiting streetside.” He leans down and, as carefully as possible, gathers the femme in his arms. Her frame weighs almost nothing. It’s a civilian’s frame, hardly equipped for battle. Her energon drips down his front as he shifts to hold her close to his body.

“Hurry.”

* * *

**_Before_ **

* * *

 

“Thanks again. For all of this.” Ariel gestures to the comfy couch she’s curled upon, the thermal blanket in her lap. “Seriously, I—”

Chromia holds up a hand to silence her, shakes her head. “For the last time—it’s not a problem. I’m happy to help.” She goes back to massaging Ariel’s ankle struts. “Feeling better?”

“If by ‘better’ you mean less like I want to die, then yes,” Ariel grumbles, and Chromia laughs. “That was humiliating.”

“I thought it was kinda hot.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Chromia shrugs. “I’m easy that way.” She moves on to the other ankle, shifting to draw Ariel’s legs into her lap. “What’s going on with you and Orion?”

“Nothing— _nothing_ ,” Ariel insists, when Chromia lifts an optic ridge. “We worked together for, like, an astrosecond, and then I left the project, and yesterday I ran into him when I was moving out. That’s it. Whole story.”

“Looked pretty cozy when we came in.”

“We were just talking.”

“Yeah. And it looked pretty cozy.”

Ariel huffs and folds her arms over her chest. “What does it matter to you?”

Chromia grins and puts Ariel’s legs aside, crawling over them to hover over the smaller femme. “Well, Orion’s my friend. And you…” She ducks her head, and Ariel leans up eagerly into a kiss, giggling against Chromia’s mouth when fingers tickle along her hip. “You’re the cutest femme I’ve ever seen.”

“So what are you proposing, exactly?”

Chromia pushes her shoulder, and Ariel lays back, biting at her lower lip components when Chromia settles between her thighs. “I’m proposing,” Chromia says, opening her codpiece with almost lazy nonchalance, and Ariel marvels at her boldness, her easy confidence, “that you stay with me as long as you feel like it, we become best friends, and also have ourselves a good time, because Orion likes you and it’ll drive him crazy.”

“You’re wrong about that last bit, but that does sound good,” Ariel says, shivering when Chromia’s fingers trace her slippery valve. “But since one of us has to say it—we _did_ just meet last night.”

“Yeah. We did.” Chromia pushes two fingers into Ariel’s valve, grinning when the smaller femme’s engine purrs and her back arches. “But you ever just get a good feeling about someone?”

Ariel’s optics soften. She hooks an arm around Chromia’s shoulders and pulls her close, kissing her again, gently. The kiss isn’t electric, doesn’t make her head spin and her struts weaken, but it feels good—safe. Better than it’s felt to kiss someone in a long, long time. “Yeah. I do.”

* * *

 

Having blown her first high-priority assignment—and rather spectacularly, at that—Ariel finds herself scribing against in the lowest of Iacon’s courts, sitting through joor after miserable joor of misdemeanor hearings, documenting everything that happens. Or, more accurately, everything that _doesn’t_ happen, because _nothing_ happens in the lower courts. She transcribes the fates of bots brought in for disorderly conduct and bar skirmishes and reckless driving, feeling her processing speed drop with every droned word from the district judge.

For the first time in a while, though, her home life makes up for her work life. In a mere matter of orns, she and Chromia have become inseparable. Chromia’s a beat cop, and is occasionally the one who escorts staggering bots into court, and spends the majority of hearings sending Ariel filthy texts and grinning suggestively across the room. As far as Ariel can tell, Chromia is good at her job—efficient, tougher than titanium, but there’s a softness to her, a compassion. Law enforcement is low-caste work, and, more often than not, so is being a criminal. The majority of Chromia’s friends, Ariel learns, are bots she should have booked and took in instead—the same way she took in Ariel. They circulate in and out of the apartment unannounced, and Ariel adjusts quickly to having a rotating group of ten or so roommates, all of whom seem utterly unsurprised to see her there.

Chromia is also a better partner than Fly-By ever was, bar none. She picks Ariel up from work, takes her out, listens to her and laughs with her, tells her off when she’s being difficult for no reason. She’s a good friend, a feat Fly-By never managed. And the interface is _ridiculous._

“It’s insane,” Ariel says, speaking lowly at her desk, busily finalizing her notes from that morning’s hearing. “She can just go and go and _go_. And no inhibitions. None! Nothing is too weird for her.”

“I’m so jealous,” Redlight sighs. “Are you two exclusive? Do you think she’d be into me?”

Ariel smiles. She’d reached out cautiously to her friend just a few orns ago, and can’t articulate her relief that Redlight seemed to miss her, too. “Why not? You can come over if you want. I think Chromia’s having a thing tonight. I mean, every night is a thing at Chromia’s place.”

“Are you serious? I’d love that. Fly-By has been so boring since you left. He just mopes around.”

Ariel winces. “Sorry about that.”

“Hon, he broke up with _you_. This one’s on him. Not your fault you’ve moved on to bigger, better things and he hasn’t.”

“Did you find someone else to move in?”

“Yeah, actually. His name is Sunstreaker. Kind of intense and moody, but Primus is he _gorgeous_. Think I could bring him tonight?”

“I mean, is he nice?”

“Not _nice_ , per se. He’s kind of mean, actually. But also sweet?”

Ariel sighs, moving on to the next transcript. “Red, normally those things are mutually exclusive.”

“You just have to meet him, I think.”

“Alright, alright. Bring him. But you’re responsible for him, okay?”

“Okay!”

Ariel gives her the address and ends the call, firing off a quick text to Chromia about their additional guests. She receives a rather lewd image in response a few breems later.

The apartment is already crowded with bots when she gets home, and she’s pleased to find that she recognizes most of them and remembers names. It’s largely the same crowd from that night at Orion’s—Sideswipe beams when he sees her and sweeps her into a hug, and Arcee’s put a drink in her hand before Ariel can so much as say hello.

“Hi, sweetness,” Chromia greets her, planting a kiss on her cheekplate. “One, you look beautiful. Two, how was work?”

“Thank you, and good.” Ariel snuggles into the arm Chromia puts around her waist. “Can you kiss me, please?”

Chromia looks surprised, but pleasantly so, and tips Ariel’s chin up to plant a firm kiss on her mouth. Ariel leans into it, looping her arms around Chromia’s shoulders, ignoring Sideswipe’s whoop and Arcee’s groan of disgust.

Chromia breaks the kiss earlier than Ariel would have liked, looking at something over Ariel’s shoulder and grinning. “Oh, hey, Jazz. Orion.”

Ariel turns. Jazz winks and waggles his fingers at her—Orion, still hovering in the doorway and looking very much like he’d rather be anywhere else, grimaces and half-lifts one hand.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Suddenly hyper-aware that Chromia’s hand is on her aft, Ariel clears her vocalizers and takes a step back. “Um. It’s been a while.”

“It has.” Orion doesn’t seem to be sure where to look. His optics meet hers and then glance away, fixing on a point somewhere over her shoulder. “You seem well.”

“Uh, yeah. I am. So do you.”

“Hi, this is officially the most boring conversation ever of all time,” Jazz says, shaking his head. “Chromia, two things! Where is the highgrade, and where is the _music?”_

Chromia grins and beckons to him; Arcee has moved on as well, letting Hot Rod attempt to impress her with his encyclopedic knowledge of illegal street racing. In a room full of laughing, chattering bots, Ariel somehow feels that she and Orion are totally alone.

“So,” Orion begins, and then stops. “You’re. Um. Back to work, I imagine.”

“Oh. Yeah. Scribing for the lower courts. Again.”

“Is that—how is that?”

“I mean, it pays the rent.” Ariel shrugs. “Can’t ask for much more.”

She could, though. She _did_ , and it led her to Orion, to the Tarn project, to a hotbed of intrigue threatening to boil over. She wants to ask about it—that flier Jetfire’s broadcast date has come and gone, and she’s aching to know whether Orion got the passcode, whether he was able to access the secret frequency and learn what was going on in Tarn. But an archivist’s work is confidential, and she doesn’t have clearance anymore.

“How’s—” She stops, sips from her highgrade to steel herself. “How’s—everything? With—you know. Tarn, and the gladiator thing, and…”

“Oh. I don’t know if I should…” He winces and gestures to the bots milling around them. At that moment, Jazz picks a track, and heavy music begins to blare from the stereo system. It’s Slagmouth again. “Not right this second. You know?”

“Right. Of course not.” She tries not to let her disappointment show, especially because he’s looking at her in that peculiar way he does, that carefully scrutinizing gaze. Suddenly desperate to break the strange silence, she cracks a grin. “Have you refueled?”

His gaze softens, and a smile quirks his mouthplates. “I haven’t.”

“Well, you’re in luck. There is so, so much highgrade.”

“I could use it, orn I’ve had.”

 _That_ begs further explanation, but she lets it rest. She fetches him a cube, dodging a few of her already-tipsy friends, and gets herself a refill while she’s at it. She locates him again hovering near the window, resisting Sideswipe’s attempts at getting him to dance to the (genuinely horrendous) music blaring through the apartment. Orion glances over at her and mouths _Save me_ as she approaches.

“Hey, Sides,” she says, sidling up to him and offering him a sweet smile, “Hot Rod’s pestering Arcee again. I bet she could use a rescue.”

Sideswipe heaves a dramatic sigh. “Sorry, Orion, good mech. Duty calls. It pains my spark to leave you, but as you know well, there’s no rest for the chivalrous.”

“Truly,” Orion snorts, and offers Ariel a smile as Sideswipe dashes away. “Thank you.”

“You should be nicer to him,” she chides, handing him his highgrade and leaning against the wall. “He’s sweet.”

“And stupid.” He sighs, taking a draw from the cube. “Although, he could have ditched me when his brother and I stopped seeing each other. I’m thankful he wanted to stay friends with me after that.”

“His brother?” Ariel lifts an optic ridge. “That the former partner Jazz was ribbing you about?”

“Yeah. He’s—” Orion glances up from his cube and freezes. His mouthplates drop open. “Son of a _glitch_.”

“What?” Ariel looks around. “What’s—” Her gaze falls on the door, where Redlight hovers, looking nervous. On her heels is a tall golden mech with a brooding expression on his faceplates. Red didn’t lie—he _is_ gorgeous, in a slightly terrifying sort of way. He looks like he’d be great in the berth, but he also looks like he wants to rip someone’s throat out. Perhaps both at the same time.

“Sunny!” Sideswipe shouts suddenly, bounding across the room and throwing his arms around the mech, who grunts and tries to dodge the embrace a moment too late. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Neither did I. Get off, Sides.”

“Oh, that’s my friend. Do you mind if I—” Ariel turns and frowns—Orion has disappeared. How did a mech that big and that clumsy manage to vanish without her noticing? She cranes her head around, peering through the mess of bots, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Befuddled, she heads to the door, and Redlight’s face breaks into a smile when she catches sight of her.

“ _Yay_ , oh Primus, I missed you _so much_ ,” Red enthuses, hurrying forward and hugging her tightly. “Please tell me everything and also can I please have a drink?”

“Yeah,” Ariel laughs, hugging her back. “It’s good to see you. That’s your new roommate, I take it?”

“Yep, that’s Sunstreaker. I didn’t know he already knew everyone here! When I told him where we were going he was like, ‘Oh, that’s Chromia’s place.’ That red mech—uh, Sideslip? Or something—that’s his _twin_ , did you know that?”

Ariel freezes. “His, uh. His twin?”

“Yeah. That’s so _wild_ , right? Spark-split twins? Almost never happens! Hey, this music is _so_ good, who’s it—Ariel?”

Ariel groans, head now in her hands. “Slag on a _stick_. I’ve gotta go.”

“What? But I just got here!”

“Yeah, I know, just—I’ll be right back, okay?” Ariel turns on her heel and takes off without another word, ignoring Redlight’s protests. She couldn’t have _known_ Red would show up with Orion’s ex, of all bots, but she still feels like an idiot.

She doesn’t have to look long—Orion is holed up in Chromia’s room, sitting at her infrequently-used computer with his chin in his palm, his other hand effortlessly skimming through the windows on the display. Ariel knocks on the doorframe and winces when he jumps.

“Sorry. Can I come in?”

“I mean, it’s your place.” He shrugs and turns back to the monitor. Ariel steps into the room, closing the door behind her.

“It’s not, really.” She takes a seat on the berth, swinging her legs. “Um. So. That mech Sunstreaker?”

Orion groans and scrubs his hand over his faceplates. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure. I just wanted to apologize. I wouldn’t have invited him if—”

“No—no, seriously. Even if you had known, there’s no reason he shouldn’t—it wouldn’t be fair of me to—ugh.” He drops his head onto the desk. “Why is this so _hard?_ We were together and now we’re not. That should be _it._ ”

“Sparks aren’t code, Orion,” Ariel says, offering him a timid smile when he looks up at her. “Easy to break, hard to understand.”

Orion stares at her for a moment, and then his optic ridge quirks. “That’s…pretty profound.”

“I have my moments.”

He sighs and sits upright, turning his gaze back to the monitor. “They’re wasting you down in the lower courts, you know. You shouldn’t be scribing at all.”

Ariel grins. “Don’t tell me you think the caste placement system got it _wrong?”_

Orion looks at her, very directly, his optics over-bright in the dim room. “Maybe so.”

She blinks, stunned by the sincerity of his response—so much so that she can’t formulate a reply. Orion looks at her a moment longer, then his mouthplates quirk upward, and he beckons to her. Ariel gets to her feet and joins him by the computer, and her spark flips when she sees Jetfire’s visage on the monitor.

“This is—”

“You’re familiar?”

“Is this the broadcast?—the one that needed—”

“The passcode, yes.”

She looks down at him, a grin spreading across her face. “You learned the gladiator’s name.”

“I did.”

" _How?”_

“Well, I—” He clears his vocalizers. “I sort of. Contacted him.”

Ariel stares. “You _what?”_

“Well, not _him_ , specifically, but I did track down a former gladiator who knew a _current_ gladiator who knew a bet-taker who—”

“Isn’t that a _huge_ breach of protocol? Against your archivist’s code, or—something?”

“It’s not— _not_ a breach of protocol? Getting involved in the events we archive is, uh…frowned upon.”

“How frowned upon?”

Orion grimaces and shrugs one broad shoulder. “The things Alpha Trion would do to me if he found out would be…unpleasant.”

Her grin returns. “So what’s in this broadcast?”

“See for yourself.” He turns up the volume, and Jetfire’s rough accent fills the berthroom. “It’s worse than we thought. It’s not a few scattered rebellions—there’s a resistance growing, and they’re organized. It’s also not isolated to Tarn.”

“What do they want?” Ariel leans in closer to the monitor, bracing herself on Orion’s shoulder.

“An end to the caste system.”

She starts and blinks down at him. “A—seriously?”

“Seriously. They’re not anarchists—most of them, anyway. They have a detailed plan of how their ideal social reconstruction would go down.”

Ariel shakes her helm slowly, optics fixed again on Jetfire, who is holding up a datapad containing a list of what appear to be names. “And this?”

“Their major complaint.” Orion pauses the video and magnifies the datapad. “Working conditions for the mining caste are becoming increasingly unsafe. The deeper they have to go to find energon ore, the more volatile conditions become. The dead are piling up with no compensation. They feel expendable.” Orion winces and rubs his helm. “And I can’t say I blame them.”

“No. No, I can’t either.” Jetfire scrolls through the list of names—and scrolls, and scrolls.

“It gets worse. Tarn’s provincial council has been misreporting a lot of the deaths, it seems—attributing fault to workers instead of accidents and equipment malfunctions, claiming some of them simply vanished or were killed in violent incidents concerning law enforcement. As of now it’s their word against the rebels’, but…it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Energon mining is Tarn’s major source of capital. I can’t imagine they’d want anything disrupting that.”

“Certainly nothing so trivial as rights for the mining caste,” Ariel snorts. “So where does all of this leave you?”

Orion looks up at her. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, you have to archive this, right?” She gestures to the screen. “The video, his claims, the names…all of it. Right?”

“I…technically, yes. That is my duty.”

“I sense a ‘but.’”

“But,” he says, and hesitates. “But, that would require disclosing how I came upon the video, and archiving the list of names might start an inquiry. Which is what the rebels want.”

Ariel sighs. “But not what you want.”

“I don’t _know_ what I want, Ariel,” Orion says, rubbing the crest of his helm, mouthplates twisting. “I know someone has to do it, has to…bring all of this to light. Someone in Iacon, so that people will listen. But should that individual to me?”

“Why not?”

“Because…” He trails off. When he speaks again, his voice is low. She can barely hear him over the thudding music. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough.”

Ariel straightens. She’s aware she’s reached a tipping point, that what she says next will unravel the future in a specific and irreparable way. That there may not be any coming back. But following her instincts has served her well these last few orns. So she chooses.

“I’ll do it.”

Orion lifts his head and stares at her in disbelief. “What?”

“I said I’ll do it. Give me copy of the video, and I’ll circulate the information somewhere people will notice.”

“You can’t do that.” Orion gets to his feet, shaking his head. “You could be _arrested_. You could be charged with aiding an active rebellion, with abetting _treason_. You understand that, don’t you? And that flier passcode-protected the transmission of that video for a reason—you’d be putting his life on the line, as well.”

“I’ll fix the video and hide his identity. That’s not a problem. And he made the thing to begin with, didn’t he? He has to know the risks. _He’s_ putting his life on the line.” Ariel looks up at the mech towering over her, jaw set. “Because this is worth it, Orion. I can’t just go back to hiding behind the Iacon towers, to pretending that Cybertron is a utopia, and still recharge at night. Can you?”

“ _Yes_ , I can. Because this is the trade-off, Ariel—this is what living in a functioning society _costs_. It’s not fair, we don’t have to like it—but you and I lead comfortable, safe lives because of the lower castes. What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t know. But it has to be better than this. You’re really okay with your liberty being secured at the cost of another’s?”

Orion winces. “I’m not _okay_ with it—obviously I think it’s terrible—”

“Then why won’t you _do_ something about it?” she demands. She sort of wants to shake him, hit him. She’s convinced he’s better than this—he hasn’t given her any reason so far to think that, of course, but she desperately _wants_ him to be better than this.

“I’m not—I’m not the sort of bot who—”

“What? Acts? Makes decisions? _Fights_ for something?” She shoulders him aside and sweeps her fingertips across the monitor. She copies the video to the terminal’s storage. “There. Now it’s out of your hands. If it somehow gets back to you, just tell Alpha Trion or whomever the frag that I stole it.”

“This is a mistake,” he says, touching her shoulder, but she throws his hand off. “Ariel, please. Listen to me.”

“I’ve _been_ listening.”

“And I know you don’t like what you hear, but that doesn’t make it any less logical, or—or any less true!”

“I don’t _care_ if it’s logical, Orion. Logic isn’t always truth.” She places a hand on his chest, doesn’t care that it makes him flinch, that the touch is too intimate. “I know what’s true and what’s right in _here_. Don’t you?”

“That’s a dangerous way of looking at the world,” he replies quietly, brushing her hand from his chest and taking a step back. “You can’t commit to a philosophy like that and expect the world to remain ordered.”

“I’m not saying we should dissolve order itself, Orion, and neither are those organizing this rebellion, or revolution, or whatever you want to call it. But the world as it is right now doesn’t work, Cybertron doesn’t _work_. Not for all of us. Jetfire’s right—something has to give.”

“But—”

They’re cut off when the door suddenly opens, music filling the room. Chromia sticks her head in and frowns at them.

“What are you two doing in here? You’re missing the fun.”

“Sorry.” Ariel turns to face her, fumbling with the terminal behind her back. She finds the power key and strikes it, breathing a sigh when she hears the terminal power down. “We were just…talking about work.”

Chromia lifts an optic ridge. “Okay. Orion, you know Sunny’s here? Want me to sneak you out?”

“No. No need.” He steps away from the desk and crosses the room, without glancing back at Ariel. “I’m going to take off for tonight. Take care, Chromia.”

“Hey—you okay?”

“Yes. Fine.” He gently moves her aside and steps through the doorway. “Goodnight.”

Chromia watches him go for a moment before looking back at Ariel, a frown on her faceplates. “What the frag was that about? Sounded like you two were yelling at each other.”

“We weren’t.”

“Sure.” Chromia steps into the room and takes Ariel’s hands in hers, canting her head to the side. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” But Ariel can’t meet her optics, staring fixedly down at her feet instead.

“…Hey.” Chromia leans forward, bumps their helms together. “It’s okay, you know. If you like him.”

“No, I—” Ariel shakes her head. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

“Hm.” Chromia nuzzles her noseplates against Ariel’s, smiling faintly. “Is this the kind of thing that partying a little might help, or should I chase everyone out?”

“No,” Ariel says, and forces a laugh. “No, don’t chase them out. Everyone’s been working hard, including you. We earned a night off.” She places her hands on Chromia’s face. “For tonight, let me just…pretend it’s all fine.”

“Everything _is_ fine,” Chromia says, and leans in to kiss her, and for one fleeting moment, Ariel almost believes her.


	5. This city is all I know

* * *

**_Now_ **

* * *

 

“I believe you,” Ratchet assures Optimus, as gently as he can, as they both stare at the door that, at any moment, will admit the hulking form of Ultra Magnus, Kaon’s city commander. “And I’ll tell him that. He probably won’t let me stay in the room. But I’ll stay as close as I can.”

Optimus nods once. He doesn’t seem afraid—his optics are bright, his gaze steady, fixed on the door. His vitals don’t reflect undue stress. He seems too young and too naïve to be so composed when his future is so uncertain, but Ratchet admires him for it. When the door finally does swing open, Optimus tenses very slightly beneath Ratchet’s hand, but gives no further indication that he’s alarmed to see Magnus step into the room.

Magnus pauses for a moment, surveys the scene—a possible criminal who gained unauthorized access to the sacred site of Vector Sigma, and the medic who has kept him alive against all odds. At length, he inclines his head.

“Doctor. I must ask that you leave.”

“Respectfully, Magnus, I’d like to request permission to stay.”

“Denied.”

“But—”

“Denied, Ratchet,” Magnus says flatly. “Should a medical emergency arise, you will be notified.”

“Called,” Ratchet corrects. “Should a medical emergency arise, you will _call_ me, so that I can _fix_ it.”

“Of course. That’s what I meant.”

Ratchet snorts. If that’s what Magnus meant, Magnus would have said that. He turns to his patient and gives Optimus’s shoulder a squeeze.

“Thank you for everything, Ratchet,” Optimus says quietly. There is a serenity in his field, a sort of lulling calm that Ratchet can’t help but find soothing. He thinks that _must_ be evidence that the mech is who he claims to be—a Prime, a safeguard and champion of the Cybertronian people. Even if he’s not, even if his fall from wherever just really _addled_ his processors, Ratchet likes the mech.

He leaves the berthside reluctantly and steps around Magnus, letting their shoulders bump. It’s a warning, and the brief flare of irritation in Magnus’s field indicates that he’s taken it as such. Ratchet smirks and steps from the room, releases a low vent when the door whooshes shut behind him and he hears the mag-lock engage. The two Elite Guards step back in front of the door, expressionless faceplates trained straight ahead.

Ratchet is unsurprised to find Wingsaber hovering in the waiting area, his wings twitching, and he rushes forward to meet the medic the moment he steps into the room.

“Well? Is Magnus with him?”

“Yes.” Ratchet motions the younger mech aside and sits down at his terminal, pulling up Optimus’s charts. He catalogues the latest vital readings—not because he’s worried they’ll slip his processor, but because he desperately needs something for his nervous hands to do.

“And?”

“And what? He kicked me out.”

“Did Magnus seem mad? Like he was gonna—I dunno, get rough or something?”

Ratchet arches an optic ridge. “Ultra Magnus is one of the most uniquely unpleasant mechs I’ve ever met, but he’s not violent unless the situation calls for it. And he knows better than to lay a hand on one of my patients.” He hopes.

“Then what’s he gonna do in there?”

“Talk to Optimus. Find out how he got into Vector Sigma and why, where he came from, who he is. And evaluate whether he presents a threat to Kaon, to the Prime, or to Cybertron at large.”

“But Optimus has already told us all of that.”

Ratchet sighs. “But Magnus is not as trusting as you.”

“Or as you,” Wingsaber says, his tone accusing. “You believe him, right?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Well?”

“Well _what_?”

“Well, you should tell Magnus that! And convince him to let Optimus go!”

Ratchet shakes his head, making a dismissing motion with his hand. “I could talk at Magnus until his audios shorted out and it won’t do a fragging thing if he’s set his processor. Let him do his investigation. As for letting Optimus go…he claims he’s a _Prime_ , Wingsaber. The Elite Guard isn’t about to let him waltz off to do as he pleases. If they decide he is a Prime, they’ll drag him before the High Council for sanctification.”

“And if they decide he isn’t?”

“Then they’ll drag him before the Senate. For execution.” Ratchet logs off his terminal and folds his hands on his desk. “In either case, there’s a good chance you’ll need to give testimony before a formal inquiry. What are you going to tell them?”

“Just what I told Magnus—that I saw the glyph notifying me of an intruder, and that I went inside, and then Vector Sigma lit up, and then there he was, so I—”

“Wait. _Wait._ ” Ratchet raises a hand, optic ridges knitting. “Say that again?”

“He was on the ground, so I went up to him and—”

“No—did you say Vector Sigma _lit up_?”

“Yeah.” Wingsaber blinks, his wings fluttering. “That’s how I realized he was just some mech, and that he was hurt, and—Ratchet?!”

Ratchet has already bolted from his desk, shoving past the flier and racing back toward his patient’s room. The two guards step forward at once to block him, but he throws one of them aside and overrides the mag-lock on the door, hurling it open just as the guards regain themselves and leap at him.

“Magnus—” They hit him from behind, taking him to the ground, and Ratchet struggles beneath them.

“What is the meaning of this?” Magnus demands, straightening from his seat by the berth and throwing down the datapad he had been diligently filling with notes. “This is a closed interrogation, Ratchet, and I must insist that—”

“Vector Sigma lit up!” Ratchet shouts, digging in his heels when the guards attempt to haul him out of the room. “Magnus, Wingsaber saw Vector Sigma _come online!_ It _recognized_ Optimus—it only responds to Primes and those they designate worthy! You know this! He’s telling the truth!”

Magnus stares at him. Slowly, he lifts a hand, and the guards drop their iron grip on Ratchet’s arms. “You say that flier saw this happen,” Ultra Magnus says. “Wingsaber.”

“Yes. He told me. Just now.”

“That detail wasn’t in his initial report.”

“Because he’s an idiot kid. He didn’t think anything of it. Thought the lights just turned on. But _you_ know better. You know Vector Sigma’s been dark since before Sentinel awakened as a Prime. Since before _Nova_ , even. The last one to interact with Vector Sigma would have been…”

Ultra Magnus’s optics narrow. He turns to look at Optimus, who looks back, expression unreadable even without the mask that he’s finally learned to retract at will.

“I almost wish I weren’t,” he intones, “but I am telling you the truth. My designation is Optimus Prime, and I have no memory of how I came to be inside Vector Sigma’s mainframe.”

“He has no memory because he has _no memory_ ,” Ratchet says fervently. “His local memories were transferred to Vector Sigma. The activity I diagnosed in his local memory banks—that was from a transfer. Vector Sigma wiped his life from before to make room for what he’d need as…” Ratchet clears his vocalizers. “As a Prime.”

Magnus stands still for a long time, his CPU working so hard Ratchet swears he can actually hear it. Finally, the city commander grunts and turns to his underlings, who look disoriented and confused without anything to guard and no one to grab.

“Get me a comm through to Iacon,” Magnus orders. “Put me in touch with Alpha Trion.”

 

* * *

  _ **Before**_

* * *

 

For the first time in his life, Orion wants to hit something. When Jazz invites him to the training arena he frequents, as he always does in jest, he’s understandably stunned when Orion says yes. Orion doesn’t know the first thing about hand to hand combat, and has never felt as out of place as he does standing in the arena, watching Jazz stretch every joint and hydraulic with painstaking precision.

“You should do this too, by the way,” Jazz says, halfway through extending his spinal strut as high as he possibly can. “Big frame like yours, you’re liable to break something if you don’t get everything properly lubricating in advance.”

“Er—what are you planning on doing to me, exactly?”

“Run you through some drills. Just the basics. How to punch, how to not get punched. Stuff like that.” Jazz bounces on his pedes, grinning.

“Are you going to hit me?”

“We’re gonna hit each other, big guy.”

Good. Without a clue what he’s doing, and sure he looks like a fool, Orion stretches his arm across his chest, mimicking Jazz’s movements. Nearby, two titanic bots are entering the fourth solid breem of a grappling match that has them both growling and snarling as they try to pin one another to the mat. Several bots in optic range boast the Elite Guard’s insignia on their shoulder plating, Jazz included. No one looks even remotely like they may be of Orion’s caste.

“A lot of my techniques aren’t gonna work for you, being so big and all,” Jazz says, once Orion has limbered to his satisfaction. Just the stretching required so much joint popping that Orion can hardly believe that in itself wasn’t the actual training. “You’ve got the benefit of having a lot of power packed in there, but a high center of gravity. You’re easy to off-balance, in other words. Good news is anyone big enough to take advantage of that is going to have the same problem.”

“Right,” Orion says, without the faintest clue what any of that is supposed to mean. “So what am I supposed to hit?”

“Make a fist for me.” Orion does so, and Jazz shakes his head. “Nope. Your wrist is going to snap if you so much as give someone a love-tap with that. And you should be punching from the midriff, not the shoulder. You need to twist your hips when you swing—it’s all about making circular momentum.”

A single right hook requires more calibrating and finessing than Orion thought possible, and while Orion appreciates Jazz’s diligence, standing and watching his friend fine-tune the angle of his wrist does absolutely nothing to help him vent off his ire with Ariel and this whole fragging project. He’s considering bailing when the doors to the arena abruptly burst open, and an older mech—the proprietor, Orion’s fairly sure—rushes in, intakes wheezing.

“Hey,” he says, loudly enough that even the grappling bots stop to look up at him, “any of you in here are caste jumpers, get out now—raid coming in. Use the maintenance halls.” And with that, he turns and leaves again at a run, heading, presumably, for the next arena over.

“Caste jumpers?” Orion wonders aloud, cocking his helm. “What’s a—” He stops when he turns and sees the look on Jazz’s face—optics wide, frame rigid. “Jazz?”

“I gotta go,” Jazz says stiffly, and without a word more, turns and books it across the arena.

Orion realizes only then that the arena itself has descended into slight chaos—a number of bots are scrambling, breaking away from their partners, tossing aside equipment, rushing for any of the three exits. Others, like Orion, simply look confused. Lacking a better alternative, Orion takes off after Jazz, struggling to pick the small mech out of the crowd. When he finally spots him, he puts on a surge of speed that makes his overworked frame scream, and manages to snag Jazz’s shoulder.

“Jazz! Wait an astrosecond, what’s—”

“I don’t have an astrosecond, big guy,” Jazz says, whirling to face him. His engine gives a loud whine. “Now you can stay or you can come, but I’ve got to get out of here. Okay?”

Orion stares at him. He has never, in all the time he has known Jazz, seen his best friend _scared_. Not like this. “Okay,” he says. “I’m going with you.”

Jazz nods and takes off once more. They run for the nearest exit, bursting into the central hallway that connects the mid-tier arenas, but rather than heading for the main entrance, Jazz takes a sharp turn down a much narrower hallway, urging Orion through a set of double doors he hadn’t noticed on the way in. These must be the maintenance halls; small passages dot the hallway that seem to lead into the bowels of each arena, and service drones zip around underfoot as Jazz and Orion pound down the hallway. Orion can hear shouting overhead, and he can’t help a panicked shout when he hears what sounds like a grenade.

“Keep going,” Jazz says, glancing up at the ceiling. A fine white mist is beginning to pour from the vents. “Go, go, go—”

After a number of disorienting turns, Jazz rams a final door, and suddenly they find themselves on the street behind the arena complex. Jazz is folding into his vehicle mode the moment his foot hits the road, and Orion follows suit, swearing as he and Jazz swerve wildly into the flow of traffic, eliciting a number of yells.

They zip through the outskirts of the business district, Jazz leading the way, executing a number of driving maneuvers that have Orion panicking as he struggles to keep pace. He doesn’t realize they’ve made it into downtown Iacon until Jazz abruptly whips off the main road and transforms back in the bipedal-only zone, his engine singing, heat pouring off his frame.

“What—” Orion transforms and stumbles, intakes wheezing, and bends over to put his hands on his knees. “What the _frag_ was all that? Were those _grenades_? What was that about—a raid, and—caste jumping—”

“Hold up,” Jazz says, panting. “Your place okay?”

“Yeah—”

He lets Jazz lead them the remaining two blocks on foot, both of them winded; Jazz still looks frightened, his optics darting about the street. He keeps glancing over his shoulder, looking past Orion at the main artery they just traversed at speeds substantially higher than the posted limit.

Orion has never been quite so grateful to collapse on the couch in his own apartment. Jazz doesn’t even make it that far in, closing the door and sinking onto his aft to rest his back against it with a long, low sigh. For several breems, they sit in silence, frames pinging faintly as their systems reestablish safe temperatures.

“Jazz,” Orion says at length, and his friend groans.

“Yeah. I know. Sorry about all that, big guy. Never expected…middle of Iacon…Primus.”

“Jazz,” Orion tries again, “what were…what _was_ that?”

Jazz heaves a sigh and gets to his feet, shuffling over to join Orion on the couch. “You know what a caste jumper is?”

“No.”

“Someone who’s living and operating in a caste they weren’t born in. You know, who didn’t go through the proper channels.”

“So—no reeducation, and no advanced training, or…”

“Right.” Jazz rubs a hand over his optics. “So. Someone like me.”

Orion stares at him. “You—what?”

“I jumped castes. Illegally. Long time ago.” Jazz leans back against the couch, stretches his legs in front of him. “I was a factory worker. Tagon Heights. I wasn’t…I mean, look at me,” he says, gesturing to his frame. “Scrappy little bot like me, I wasn’t gonna last there long. Did what I had to do to get out. Came to Iacon, enlisted with the Elite Guard. Put it all behind me—mostly.”

“So you…you aren’t of the warrior castes.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And you—enlisted illegally?”

“Technically, yeah,” Jazz says. He looks tired, and not just physically—his frame is slumped and still, belying none of his usual frenetic energy.

“I mean—how? Outside of the sanctioned channels, caste jumping, how does it…?”

Jazz smiles ruefully. “Got enough credits, the right bot can whip you up a whole new caste designation. Hacks the right archives, messes with the right systems, and boom. Not perfect, of course. Anyone does enough digging, they’d eventually find out that a mech of my designation and build is missing in the Tagon Heights. But it holds up well enough.”

Orion shakes his head, struggling to process. “And those raids?—what are those about?”

“That’s a special unit in the Elite Guard, ironically. Bureau for the Enforcement of the Caste System. We call ‘em becks, for short. They get tipped off about jumpers hanging around certain locales and go in and arrest anyone who can’t provide adequate caste documentation.”

“Which you don’t have?”

“Which I don’t have.”

“That’s…” Orion stops. He doesn’t have words for—whatever that is. He tries to imagine living his life with that kind of paranoia hanging over his head, that kind of fear. He can’t.

Jazz tilts his head to look at him, face solemn. “You gonna turn me in?”

“What? No!” Orion leans over the couch, grasps Jazz’s hand in his own. “No, of course not. Never. You’re—my best friend.”

Jazz’s face relaxes a little, and he smiles, patting Orion’s arm. “Thanks, buddy. I never meant for you to get involved in all this. Hopefully this is the end of it.”

“Why—I mean—why did you do it? Jump, I mean. It seems like a huge risk.”

“Yeah. It is.” Jazz shrugs. “But I couldn’t have a life in Tagon. Couldn’t do anything but work in that Pit-hole of a factory until exhaustion or some catastrophic accident did me in. Couldn’t make ends meet, couldn’t save up for the future, couldn’t get out, couldn’t…couldn’t _anything_. I had to get out. I didn’t care what it took. Couldn’t live my life like a sparkless drone anymore. Even if it meant going on the run, I had to…feel free. Just once.” Jazz looks at him again, his optics suddenly fiery. “Even if I get caught, even if they lock me up for jumping, it’ll have been worth it. I’d take a breem free in Iacon over a thousand joors a laborer in Tagon.”

Orion stares at him—thinks back on that flier, Jetfire, looking longingly at the femme filming his illegal declaration. That gladiator, whom he now knows as Megatronus, the rising rebellions—revolutions—now dotting the face of Cybertron. And Ariel, her anger, her conviction. Something very heavy settles into his spark, and stays there.

“Hey, you mind if I crash here tonight?” Jazz asks. “My place is probably fine, I mean, we didn’t get caught in that raid, but—”

“Yes. You can. Stay as long as you like.” Orion gets to his feet. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Whoa, hey—where are you going?”

“To Chromia’s.” Orion heads for the door, and sets his jaw. “There’s something I have to do.”

 

* * *

  ** _Now_**

* * *

 

“It will be but a short errand,” the old mech had assured her, patting her hand lightly. “I shall return soon.”

He hasn’t, yet, but she waits patiently. She has nothing else to do. He’s left her an assortment of holocubes and datapads, everything from surrealist fiction to dry economics reports. Elita-1 peruses the small library with half-interest, skimming whatever catches her optic, which is little. The mythos of Solus Prime. A report on an organic bipedal lifeform found on a planet in a neighboring system. Summaries of Tarn’s recent economic crisis caused by laborer caste uprisings.

A sharp pain lances through her helm, and she pauses, optics screwed shut, while her neural net burns and then tingles in the aftermath. She sets the data on Tarn aside, alongside the other materials that have elicited such reactions.

“I was only able to salvage so much of your memory core,” Alpha Trion had told her, seeming sincere, apologetic. “But it may repair itself. If anything triggers curious sensation, be sure to make note of it.”

So far, it’s a travel ad boasting about a luxury stay in the Crystal Gardens, a video documenting Iaconian street artists, a profile of a local dive called Maccadam’s, and this report on Tarn. Elita seats herself on the berth Trion’s set aside for her, still cradling her helm, and frowns down at the feeble pile of scattered data. How it all connects is entirely beyond her. It mostly has to do with Iacon, and Trion did find her here. It seems sensical that perhaps she is from her, or at least spent a large or significant portion of her life in the city. Why a report on Tarn should trigger anything is beyond her.

She sweeps her fingertips across the first holocube she reacted to, gazing again at the three-dimensional hologram of the Crystal Gardens, resplendent in the starlight. They look beautiful—one of Cybertron’s few natural formations. Delicate helixes spiral up from the surface of the planet, suspended by their own unique electromagnetic fields. They sometimes gather electrical storms around them, a phenomenon no scientific mind on Cybertron has been able to explain fully. What the crystals are, where they come from, even what they’re _made_ of, is up to just about anyone’s best guess.

Elita would like to go there—thinks that, perhaps, she already has. The hologram leaves a warm, soothing feeling in her spark. The ache in her helm abating, she gets to her feet and crosses the study to stand before the massive plexiglass window that makes up its south-facing wall. It is the peculiar time of the orn when all three of Cybertron’s satellites are visible even as the star the world orbits disappears beneath the horizon. Elita places her hands against the glass, looks out at the expanse of the city beneath her. Iacon is always brightly lit, a sprawling metropolis reaching for the edges of the horizon. The sight of the cityscape sets her at ease—so much so that she doesn’t jump, for once, when the door to her borrowed quarters opens and Alpha Trion enters.

“Are you well?” he asks, joining her at the window.

“Yes.” She curls a hand into a fist against the glass as her helm throbs. “Just. Trying to remember.”

“Don’t force it,” he says, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Explain it to me again. Please.”

Trion hums, lowers his hand. “I found you in Iacon, quite by accident. You were dying. By the time I was able to find medical help, you had died—your frame, that is. Your spark had crystalized. I had a—a colleague of mine repair your frame, with some modifications, to replace what had been lost. The process wiped much of your CPU. And when we brought your frame online…”

“My spark—decrystalized.”

“That is as near a term for it as I can fathom. I’ve told you that the phenomenon is unheard of.” He raises a datapad in her periphery. “That is what I was out confirming at the Iacon Hall of Records.”

Elita winces, clasps her helm. The pain is much sharper this time, like a lance driven through her. She waits, but once again, the pain dissipates, leaving her memories as clouded as before.

“And this colleague of yours. They couldn’t explain it, either?”

“She could not.”

“May I speak with her?”

Trion’s helm shakes. “She is very private, I’m afraid. We were fortunate to get her aid once.”

Elita sighs, lowers her optics. Iacon twinkles before her. “Then what am I to do now?”

“I think you should stay here a while longer and recover. Once you are well, of course, your life is yours. You should do with it as you please.”

“Am I needed somewhere?”

“That I do not know,” Trion says, very gently. “I found you by happenstance in that apartment. I know nothing of who you were.”

Elita rubs her helm, frowning at the Iaconian towers sparkling on the darkening horizon. A thought occurs to her. “Can you show me where you found me? Maybe if I go back, something will…”

“That area of the city has destabilized since I found you. It’s very much still under siege. Going there will be dangerous. We may even be forced to fight.”

“You made it there. And you got me back.”

Trion hesitates. “That was a twist of providence,” he says, with the care of a mech defusing a live bomb. “And I daresay I won’t be so lucky twice. As I said, the situation has changed.” He pauses. “I have allies in the Elite Guard. I could arrange for protection. But the reward would have to be worth the risk. Perhaps it would be wise to wait until the city is retaken.”

“You mean _if_ the city is retaken.”

Trion hums, a low acknowledgement. “Yes. I have to imagine that Sentinel Prime will not let his capital fall so easily. But recent events have surprised me at every conceivable turn.”

Elita considers. Shuttering her optics, she investigates the directories that aren’t hidden by the mysterious blockages in her memory core. She has done this every orn since awakening in a strange medical facility with Alpha Trion at her berthside, and every orn her access improves, but the frustrating truths of her own self continue to elude her. She is taking it on good faith that Trion’s story is true—that he really did intercede to help her in her darkest hour of need, that she isn’t some sort of experiment or toy he has puppeteered for his own amusement.

“I possess battle protocols,” she notes with surprise. “Was I a soldier?”

“I cannot imagine so. You had a very small frame, and I saw no weapons. You were of the civil servant or service industry castes, I suspect.”

She unshutters her optics and turns her gaze down to her new body—tall, broad, powerful. She opens and closes her new hands. “No longer, though.”

“No. These are dark times for Cybertron, and dangerous. When my colleague rebuilt you, she gave you a frame that would help you survive.”

“I could fight, then, if I had to.”

“With some preparation, yes.”

Another silence as Elita ponders, her CPU working quickly through the occasional frissons of pain. She has battle protocols, and a body built for combat. And she can’t restore her memories until Iacon is freed—as badly as she wants to seek out the apartment where she was found, she can’t in good faith ask other bots to put their lives at risk to fulfill that desire. And she certainly can’t go alone, not if these Decepticons are as dangerous as Trion claims.

“Then I’ll fight,” she says at length, turning to look up at Trion. “To retake Iacon.”

Trion looks at her, optic ridges raised. “You could die.”

Elita grins. “I won’t squander your kindness so easily. This city is all I know. If I can help defend it, I will.”

Alpha Trion considers her, and finally, he nods. “You will need training.”

“Do you know someone who could help?”

The old mech sighs, the wing-like appendages on his back shifting. “I’ll make some calls.”

 

* * *

**_Before_ **

* * *

 

Ariel leaves the apartment as quietly as she can. She leaves her small cargo crate and the vast majority of her possessions behind, though she has little left to her name—most of her collection of strange gems and minerals has a new home in the suspicious pawn shop behind Maccadam’s. She’s gotten a reasonable chunk of credits in return—enough, she thinks, to hold down a low-end apartment in Tarn for a few cycles. She kept her favorite piece in the collection, a cerulean-hued piece of quartz supposedly from the Crystal Gardens. She’s more reluctant to subspace her other remaining possession—the tiny, civilian-legal energy pistol she purchased a few orns before. All she knows of Tarn is that it’s dangerous, and as much as she wants to be prepared, she can’t imagine holding the pistol and firing upon another bot. She doesn’t even know how to work the thing, but it’s too late to correct that little oversight.

She sits on the edge of Chromia’s berth before she goes, watching the blue femme recharge. She’s already penned the note that will explain her sudden absence and left it on Chromia’s holoscreen; all that remains is to actually depart. She traces her fingertips gently along Chromia’s faceplate, spark churning, and leans down to kiss her very lightly before getting to her feet and leaving the berthroom. She takes a last look around the apartment before heading out the door.

Her nerves really kick up once she’s on the main artery that will carry her to Iacon’s transport district. She really is going. She’s going to board a shuttle to Tarn. Well, to Uraya, more specifically—transport in and out of Tarn has been shut down as of two orns ago. She has two tasks in Uraya—put Jetfire’s now-doctored video onto the planetary network, and figure out how to illegally enter a state that’s currently under martial law with Elite Guards crawling along every klik of the border. She envisions herself trading an exorbitant number of credits to a seedy merchant and hiding in the back of a convoy, perhaps hidden under a tarp while border guards search every transport.

A sign marking the next turn-off momentarily disrupts her fantasizing. The turn-off heads into downtown Iacon. For just an astrosecond, she seriously considers taking it, heading into the heart of the metropolis, knocking on Orion’s door, and—and what, exactly? Begging him to come with her? Demanding that he apologize? Apologizing herself? She zooms past the turn-off, and though the choice has been removed from her immediate future, her spark still feels burdened. It occurs to her that if something does happen to her in Tarn, she’ll be leaving things with Orion on an awfully sour note.

It's all she can do not to turn around.

When she finally arrives at the mass transport terminal, her spark is a static-laced ball of panic in her chest. Pump thundering, she approaches the ticket kiosk and maneuvers through its menus, trying not to hear the impatient tutting of the bot behind her, hovering too long over the map of Cybertron and the glowing glyphs prompting her to select her destination.

Uraya, she tells herself, but can’t bring her hand to move. The terminal is too loud, too crowded, too—everything. The mech behind her evidently runs out of patience, because his hand clasps around her upper arm and jerks her around—

And then he’s on the ground, out cold, and Orion Pax is standing over him, looking as startled as Ariel feels, staring at his own closed fist with an expression of such dumbfounded confusion that she almost wants to laugh. The mech is already getting back to his feet, and Orion lunges toward her, seizes her hand, and before her processor can catch up, he’s dragging her along behind him, weaving through the crowded terminal. Ariel goes, struggling to match his pace, trying to wrap her processors around the fact that he’s _here_ , that he came after her, that he—Primus almighty, just punched a mech for laying hands on her?

He finally brings them to a halt on a mostly unoccupied platform; glancing at a sign overhead, Ariel notes that it leads to the shuttle bay where transports bound for Tarn fuel up for the long haul ahead. Orion’s vents are whistling, his optics scanning the terminal behind them, but for now, no one has pursued them.

“Primus,” he wheezes, rubbing his hand. “I can’t believe I…I just…Primus.” He looks down at her, his gaze softening, raises his hand as if to touch her—and then seems to think better of it, lets it fall back to his side. “Um. Hi. Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” She blinks up at him. For the first time, his height doesn’t make him seem so clumsy, so awkward. He looks vaguely imposing. “Hi. Orion, what are you doing here?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, his optics searching hers. “You were going to Tarn, weren’t you,” he says. It’s not a question. She nods. “I went to Chromia’s looking for you and she showed me the note you left. She said you weren’t answering her calls. You scared her.”

“I’ll apologize.”

“What are you going to do when you get there? To Tarn.”

“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I have no clue.”

Orion groans, rubs a hand along the crest of his helm. “But you’re still going.”

“I have to. I can’t explain it differently than I’ve already tried. It just…feels like the right thing to do.”

The archivist looks at her again, that long, wondering look. It’s different now, somehow—in a way she can’t name. Orion sighs and places a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re a reckless fool,” he says—murmurs, almost—and then he draws her up against his frame, slips his arms around her. Ariel is so surprised she can’t even return the embrace, blinking against his chestplates instead, marveling at the heat coming off his frame. She feels something aching, realizes only when he’s stepped back and released her that there’s a dull throbbing in her spark.

“Alright,” Orion sighs, placing his hands on his hips and scanning the terminal, a frown curving his mouthplates. “Where else can we get tickets that’s not that particular kiosk?”

Ariel begins to point, and then processes what he’s said. “Wait. What? We? Where can _we_ get…?”

“Yes, we, and tickets.”

“You’re—”

“Coming with you. Frankly, I don’t think I have much choice. Someone has to keep you from getting yourself killed.” He sighs again, tipping his helm. “Look. I’m sorry. I’m a coward. I thought I was just being pragmatic, and maybe I was, so—so maybe it’s both? But, in any case. You’re right. We should go to Tarn. We should see for ourselves what’s happening there. And if it’s as bad there as Jetfire said, then…then we need to do what we can to change things.”

Ariel could kiss him—wants to, she realizes, but thinks better of it. Instead she takes his hand in hers, runs her thumbs along the dents across his knuckles, and squeezes. Very gently. “Orion—thank you.”

He looks away, clearing his vocalizers. “Um. Sure. I mean. You’re welcome. I mean—here, I’ll go find another kiosk. Will you call Chromia? Tell her you’re safe, at least. I’ll be right back.”

Ariel nods, turns and watches him head back into the terminal proper. She pings her comm and sends Chromia a message. The femme’s voice is in her audio an astrosecond later.

“Slag it, Ariel! What the Pit was that about!”

Ariel winces, placing a hand over her audio cover. “Sorry—I’m sorry, Chromia. Really. I shouldn’t have left like that—I’m sorry.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. Primus, femme, I thought you were—well, I’ve got an inventive imagination, to say the least. Where are you now? Did Orion catch up to you?”

“Yes. We’re at the mass transit terminal.” Ariel leans against a nearby wall, grinning. “He punched someone.”

“Wh— _Orion_ did?”

“Yeah. This mech was being rough with me, and Orion hit him.”

Chromia laughs, in her loud, warm way, and the sound of it makes Ariel want to cry for reasons she can’t even begin to identify. “Primus. You’ve really done a number on that mech.” She pauses—and then pauses some more, a silence that goes on too long. “So you actually do like him, huh?”

Ariel takes in a slow breath. “Yes. I do.”

“Gotta tell you, you did a slag job hiding it.”

Ariel giggles at that, wiping a hand across her optics. “I know.”

“Pit. So we’re breaking up, huh?”

“I’m so sorry, Chromia. You’ve done so much for me, and I—”

“Nah.” Chromia sighs, a rush of static in her audio. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. He likes you too, you know. But he _is_ an idiot. So be patient with him.”

“I will. I mean, I’ll try.”

“Can’t ask for more than that. When you coming home, sweetness?”

“I’m not sure. Orion’s coming with me, though.”

“Figures. Well, go do—whatever it is you’re doing. I won’t ask questions. There’s a place here for you when you get back.”

Chromia hangs up without waiting for Ariel to respond. She does cry then, just a little. She and Chromia weren’t going to fall in love—she knows that. Even so. It was nice to pretend, even for such a little while.

She’s composed herself again by the time Orion returns, having successfully procured their tickets to Uraya.

“That’s as far as we can get via shuttle,” he says, apologetically, but Ariel only nods. She knew that much going in. “Do you have any luggage?”

“No. Do you?”

He frowns. “I suppose not.”

“And the Hall of Records? Is it really okay for you to leave?”

“Not sure. I don’t know if an archivist has ever taken time off.”

Ariel grins up at him. “This will be exciting, then.”

He groans. “Not the word I’d use. But sure.”

They board the small shuttle just a joor later, crowded in with a swath of bots who all look worn and weary. They crush themselves into seats that are a little too small for Orion’s broad frame, seated so close their shoulders almost touch.

Almost.

 


End file.
